
Class _£jT_5S_ 

Book ^B3L^. 

GoppghtN 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



PRESENT-DAY CONSERVA 
TISM AND LIBERALISM 

WITHIN BIBLICAL LINES 

A Concise and 
Comprehensive Exhibit 

BY 

JAMES GLENTWORTH BUTLER, D.D. 

Author of " The Bible Work," 11 vols 



" The disturber is always active, and his audience 
is large . . . The world does not belong to the 
disturber and his excited victims, and men of sense 
should say so in the open." Ex. Gov. Black 




BOSTON 

SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY 

1911 



t^ 1 



"Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again: 
The eternal years of God are hers !" 

Bryant 



Copyright, 1911 
Sherman, French &* Company 



CI.A292532 



FOREWORD 

The purpose of this book is to compare and 
contrast present-day Conservatism and Liberal- 
ism; in clear, concise detail comprehensively to 
unfold these earth- and heaven-wide, antago- 
nistic systems of thought, — to trace succinctly 
their origin, basis, methods, substance, personal 
effects, and final, abiding issues. It undertakes 
to show: 

First, that modern Conservatism has its basis 
and substance, and finds its vitality in Divinely 
revealed and verified facts, and points to its 
effective results in the existing world-wide Chris- 
tendom. At every step it accepts the estab- 
lished laws of thought, and deals with objective 
facts ; buttressing these with reasonings, corol- 
laries, and conclusions, with evidence and proof. 
It is a Positive system, founded upon and ex- 
pressly stated in the terms of the Bible record 
touching the Redemptive agency of the Triune 
Godhead. Thus, for a sanely thinking mind, 
conscious of responsibility to God and aware 
of His gracious intervention to save, this sys- 
tem has a practical starting point, a solid 
standing ground, and leads to consequent con- 
viction and acceptance. 



FOREWORD 

Next, that the system of Liberalism exactly 
reverses all these points. It baldly announces 
that its canons of interpretation and its doc- 
trines are wholly comprised in Negative terms. 
Denying and ignoring Divinely revealed facts 
it presents no objective basis and of course can 
offer neither evidence, argument, or proof. It 
coldly sets up its own fanciful conceptions and 
baseless theories, assumes and asserts their 
truth, without even a hint of reasoning. In 
making these vagrant and proofless assertions 
in place of an authoritative Revealer it substi- 
tutes a natively ignorant, finite man for the 
only All-Knower, the Infinite God. In its is- 
sues and effects it is a Destructive System, 
without effort, care, or thought of replacing 
it with even a visionary Constructive fabric. 

Upon the decision of this supremely vital 
issue every man's eternal condition is staked. 
In its consideration the influence of natural 
bias or prejudice, of the spirit of partisanship, 
or indulgence in casuistry, is simply and openly 
suicidal. 

" Respice Finem ! " was the counsel of a cul- 
tured Pagan moralist, expanded by Asaph in 
his reasonings and conclusions upon actual life 
conditions, clearly stated in the seventy-third 
Psalm. Sane reason, and clear, honest think- 
ing considers, estimates, and decides the great 
life-question from the standpoint of eternity. 



FOREWORD 

What do life's ultimate issues promise concern- 
ing the changeless future to my own ever exist- 
ing spirit? The only assured answer we read 
in the confessing words of Peter: "Lord, to 
whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of 
eternal life!" "This is life eternal," said the 
Eternal Son to the Father, "that they should 
know Thee the only true God, and Him whom 
Thou didst send, even Jesus Christ." 



SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS 



CHURCH CREEDS AND CHRISTIAN 
EXPERIENCE 

Two Misstatements Corrected, in Address of Pres. 
Brown at the Opening of Union Seminary: First, The 
notion that Creeds were first Formulated by a "For- 
tuitous Concourse" of Individuals, Each Qualified for 
Creed-making by a Mushroom Leap into a Matured 
Christian Experience; Shown to be Fanciful and Un- 
historic; Historic Facts disclose the true method of 
Creed Formation. Second, The Radical and Hurtful 
Error of the Address: An Explicit Reversal of the 
only possible Relation between Creed, or formed Belief, 
and Experience; The True Relation proved to be, Ab- 
solute Dependence of Experience upon Creed. Defini- 
tion of Christian Experience; Its needful and helpful 
Function in Confirmation of every Truth Revealed and 
Believed. Instructive Facts touching Creedal History. 

II 

UP-TO-DATENESS, DESIRABLE AND 
UNDESIRABLE 

Desirable: Advanced Knowledge wisely Sought and 
Personal Influence rightly Gained if Founded upon 
clearly Ascertained Divine Truth and actually Expe- 
ienced Divine Guidance and Aid. 

Undesirable: When it takes the form of Ignorant, 
Unguided Self-Obtrusion, under the Pressure of Selfish 
Pride and Ambition, and is the Demeaning Product of 
an immensely exaggerated Native Conceit. Applied to 



SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS 

self-styled "Modernism," of which Excessive Inborn Con- 
ceit is the Generative Force; Particularly to the Theory 
of Sabatier and Ritschl, Attributing to the Natural Un- 
informed, Human Reason (in every man) an Inherent 
Power of Knowing and Adjudging all Truth. Closes 
with a Kindly Warning to all Believers respecting their 
Exposure to spiritual harm from Conceit. 



Ill 

CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM OF 
TO-DAY 

Introductory: Grounds of Knowledge and reasona- 
ble Certitude of Truth; Trustworthy Reports of Mental 
Faculties the Basis of Knowledge; Truth, or exact 
Knowledge results when the Mental View, or "Thought" 
corresponds to the "Tiling" or Object of Knowledge; 
i. e., when the Subjective Apprehension agrees with the 
Objective Reality. The Reason for Certitude is found 
in Evidence. Revealed Facts of God's Redemptive 
Dealing with Man embody all Religious Truth and are 
the sole Subject-matter of Investigation; Proof of these 
Facts Divinely Revealed. The terms "Doctrine" and 
"Dogma" ruled out of this Discussion. 

True Place and Meaning of Conservatism in Present- 
Day Use: How Applied in past generations; Cause of 
Transformation; Spirit of Modern Conservatism; Its 
Subject-matter of Belief, the Sovereign Facts of Divine 
Revelation; Full Synopsis of the Essentials of Christian 
Faith, Embodying and Defining the Living and Working 
Conservatism. 

Liberalism of To-day: 1. Its Underlying Root, the 
Theory of Evolution; Its History and Malign Effects 
Outlined. 

2. First Emanation from the Evolutionary Root, The 
Denial and Elimination of The Supernatural; Its Wide 
Realm, Assured Reality, Solid Basis, and immeasurably 
Blessed Results; Fatal Effects of its Denial. 

3. Next Evolutionary Outgrowth, The Theory of 



SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS 

Autonomous Mind; Its Meaning and Shallowness Ex- 
posed, and its Possibility Annihilated. 

4. Next and most Tangible Emanation, The Self- 
Styled "Higher Criticism/' with its Abnormal and 
Impious Work of Disintegration and Mutilation of the 
Word of God; Its Tenets and Assumption of Superior 
Scholarship Exposed and Refuted. 

5. The Crowning Product of its Evolutionary Emana- 
tions, The "New Theology"; A Double Misnomer, with- 
out Base or Support: Illustrative Citations ("Specimen" 
Denials) of Four Prominent Advocates: Dr. Lyman 
Abbott, R. J. Campbell, Dr. Charles Eliot, and Rev. 
Dr. Wm. Adams Brown. A Shadowy Plea in Support 
of Liberalism's Asserted Negations, the proud boast of 
Intellectual Freedom — Punctured. Closing Summary. 

I, II AND III FORTRESSED BY IV AND V 

IV 

THE GODHEAD AN ETERNAL TRINITY 

God in Three Persons; Relation of Three Persons; 
Fatherhood of God; Man's Sonship; Appeal of Three 
United Persons; Intercommunion Life of Father, Son, 
and Holy Spirit; Attitude in Prayer to the Three Divine 
Persons; Scriptural Testimony to the Trinity; Three- 
fold Office-Work in Man's Redemption. 



PLACE AND WORK OF JESUS CHRIST 

Identified with O. T. Jehovah; O. and N. T. Texts 
Linked; Titles Applied to Christ; N. T. Disclosures of 
Christ Match Old Testament Revelations. Christ the 
Bevealer of All Truth in O. and N. Testaments, Both 
Subject and Author of O. Testament. 

Christ the Actor for the Godhead in Revelation, Crea- 
tion, Providence, and Redemption; Ignorance of this 
Transcendent Fact has produced Ritschlism and "New 
Theology." 



SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS 

Proof cited from Prof. B. W. Bacon's Mutilation of 
the Sermon on the Mount. Alleged Scriptural Support: 
1. "Emptied Himself"; True Interpretation annihilates 
"Kenosis"; 2. "Neither the Son," reasonably interpreted 
proves the Liberal Inference to be baseless and impious. 

VI 

PERIL FROM "MODERN THOUGHT," GOD'S 

WARNING VOICE 
Class Exposed to Peril; Two Points of Peril: I. 
Deity of Christ and the Holy Spirit; 2. Integrity and 
Sufficiency of the Word of God; God's Words of En- 
lightenment and Warning. 



PRESENT DAY CONSERVATISM 
AND LIBERALISM 



CHURCH CREEDS AND CHRISTIAN 
EXPERIENCE 

Personal Note. 

As a careful student of the Word of God 
and of many volumes of scholarly and devout 
exposition, with some thoughtful consideration 
of the few widely accepted Theological Sys- 
tems, for nearly seventy years, and as one who 
seeks "to contend earnestly for the Faith," the 
writer would make definite reply to the two 
basal misstatements in the address of President 
Brown at the opening of the new Home for 
Union Seminary. The apparent purpose of 
the address was to justify the existing open 
hostility of the Faculty (or its heterogeneous 
majority) toward the Presbyterian Church. 

We recall and note the fact that for many 
fruitful years that great Church, honored, and 
was honored by, the signally eminent Faculty 
of half century ago. Models of Christian 
courtesy, they were men of refined culture, of 
profound learning expressed with great clarity, 
grace and force, and were everywhere recog- 
nized as masterly teachers of Biblical Theology, 
1 



2 CHURCH CREEDS AND 

and of an Exegesis that included both the letter 
and the spirit. Their students have largely 
contributed to the progress of the Church and 
to the maintenance of its integrity to the 
Faith as God-given in His Word — Nomina 
Clara: Rev. Drs. William Adams, Henry Boyn- 
ton Smith, Roswell D. Hitchcock, Philip Schaff, 
Wm. G. P. Shedd, and Marvin R. Vincent. [I 
may be permitted to add, that all these friends 
freely offered their volumes, and three of them 
their MSS., by the use of which the pages of 
the "Bible Work" were greatly enriched.] 

Under the heading, "The Church and its 
Creeds" (N. Y. Observer, Nov. 10), President 
Brown undertakes to define their mutual rela- 
tions, and fills eight columns with what seems 
to logically thinking men, tenuous, specious, 
and fallacious reasoning. 

As his first misstatement, he bases all creeds 
upon "a process of choice" (testified solely by 
individual consciousness) "which we call Chris- 
tian experience." This is his starting point. 
These lightly expressed and somewhat enig- 
matic words carry a grave meaning and con- 
tain one of the most insidious and destructive 
root-errors of Liberalism, or New Theology. 
For "Christian experience" must have behind it 
a mature Christian believer, with knowledge of 
Christian truth. But there is here no hint of 
any source of objective truth or knowledge. 



CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 3 

The men spoken of, and afterward referred to, 
spring at once to the knowledge and forces of 
Christian manhood. More than this, they are 
at once invested with inherent power of appre- 
hending and declaring what is truth. And 
these mushroom growths of experienced men 
are widely scattered over great breadths of ter- 
ritory. Without any known links of connec- 
tion, the product of experience is identical 
among them all. So the address goes on to 
trace the after "process" : "The Church is 
made up of persons with this common Chris- 
tian experience. And in order to unite in one 
body there must be some interchange of ex- 
pression indicating the experience which is the 
real bond. . . . They must tell each other." 
This theory of first thinking and feeling alike 
in an identical experience, evolved out of every 
man's own uninformed and uninfluenced native 
consciousness, seems airy and immature. But 
the further suggestion of a "fortuitous con- 
course" of many units, obsessed with like experi- 
ences, the getting of these individually sepa- 
rated and mentally diverse men into perfect 
agreement in opinion and feeling, bringing them 
simultaneously to think alike about a future 
organization, and then moving them by a com- 
mon impulse to start out, like the Three Kings 
in "Ben Hur," to meet together, each with a 
forethought of a formulated, uniting bond of 



4 CHURCH CREEDS AND 

Church organization, all this without knowl- 
edge of place or time or fact of such meet- 
ing, and without a single illumining historic 
illustration, it would seem, to a matter of 
fact thinking man, as if the whole scheme, 
thus far, was woven out of a purely fanci- 
ful fabric. But the theory we are consider- 
ing goes further and, in the same simple way 
of thinking, affirms progress. It continues: 
"Then definition began to creep in. . . . By 
degrees, not only some definition, but also some 
explanation and inference crept into such 
avowals, which took on a more formal and 
stereotyped character. At length, what we 
know as the Apostles' Creed grew up — or was 
built up — and we see a few additional state- 
ments and some incentives to the Christian life 
included. Then the declaration of Nicaea, the 
decree of Chalcedon; long afterwards the arti- 
cles of Trent and the Protestant formularies." 
This is the visionary theory of the original 
method by which Creeds were introduced and 
formulated. (In the closing summary, the 
theory just unfolded holds no historic place. 
Nor could it attain such honor, since it is a 
pure product of Modernism.) It is in direct 
contradistinction from the actual facts, which 
facts these theorizers characterize as unmean- 
ing tradition and dismiss as unworthy of con- 
sideration. 



CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 5 

Our direct denial and ample disproof of this 
entire theory is embodied in a single paragraph 
of incontrovertible historic facts: 

The differing creeds of Protestant churches 
were formulated by small groups of devout and 
scholarly men gathered in the schools founded 
and formed by the great leaders at the outset 
of the Reformation. The grounds of differ- 
ence in their formulas were twofold : the in- 
terpretation of Biblical texts and the philo- 
sophic conception of the nature and working of 
God and of man. With manifold complicated 
questions arising from these differing inter- 
pretations and philosophic views, increased and 
emphasized by wide diversities of mental ability 
and training and by temperamental idiosyn- 
crasies, reenforced by a common native bias, 
partisan spirit, and pride of opinion, it was 
inevitable that the several groups should be- 
come widely separated, and reach and formu- 
late opposing judgments upon many points 
of doctrine. Hence the birth and growth of 
manifold denominations in the visible Church. 
Hence, too, the prolonged and acrimonious dis- 
cussions in the schools and in innumerable 
volumes, which for three centuries have marred 
and weakened the body of Christ and delayed 
the onward march of His Kingdom. 

Happily, we may note one good result of this 
protracted controversy. As all attainment in 



6 CHURCH CREEDS AND 

the sciences and practical arts has been gained 
and all advance of nations toward civilization 
has been reached through long-sustained con- 
flicts of thought, experiment, or warfare, so the 
centuries of embittered, painful, separating dis- 
putations of good men concerning the Bible 
teachings have at length brought into clearer 
light the apprehensible depths and grand sim- 
plicities of the Gospel of Christ and wrought 
a deeper, weightier conviction of their Divine 
source and immeasurable value. 



Before proceeding with the second point of 
arraignment of the address, we note some in- 
structive facts linked to our general theme: 

1. No denominational creed has ever been 
able to match its formulas with Scripture texts. 
The Presbyterian Church (North) tried, not 
many years ago by a committee of its foremost 
scholars, to sustain its grand old "Confession,'' 
but failed at many points and wisely improved 
its creed by revision. 

2. Only within the past decade — when, as 
the result of Christianity's leaven in the world's 
life, facilities of intercourse and community of 
interest have established the feeling of neigh- 
borhood among nations and brought in a fur- 
ther promise of brotherhood, and when, under 
these added influences which have reached and 
dominated the churches, theological differences 



CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 7 

have been ignored and discussions of differing 
points of belief and practice have practically 
ceased between Christian denominations — only 
with the present-day permanent truce has the 
idea come to birth and found expression that 
there can be but one Biblical creed for all Chris- 
tians. Hence the great Federation movement 
has sprung at once into maturity, and has be- 
gun its effective, blessed work at home and in 
the mission field. 

3. Upon the essentials of the one Biblical 
creed there is complete agreement among all 
evangelical denominations. They find these 
essentials in the facts of God's Redemptive 
dealings with man as these are recorded in the 
Word Divinely revealed. Assuming God's crea- 
tive might and moral supremacy as asserted by 
Himself, the one creed of the universal Chris- 
tian Church includes as essential: (1) The 
three-fold office work of Jesus Christ, the 
Eternal Son, and the two-fold agency of the 
Eternal Spirit; (2) The corresponding condi- 
tioned action of the human spirit in "repent- 
ance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus 
Christ." These are the elements and this the 
substance of a living, productive Biblical creed. 
Whoever accepts and adopts these elements is 
a genuine disciple and follower of Christ. And 
the church that adopts these essential facts as 
its creed is a genuine Christian church. The 



8 CHURCH CREEDS AND 

man or the church may hold many differing 
opinions upon other questions, but these can- 
not affect their Christian character or fellow- 
ship in worship or work. 

4. It should be also noted in passing that 
while the old friction of feeling and discussion 
of doctrine have ceased between the denomina- 
tions, speculative notions of a revolutionary 
and destructive character, originating with 
open infidels, have been insidiously introduced 
by avowed Christian professors and ministers, 
who are now stirring up strife and hindering 
spiritual progress in many evangelical churches. 
The disturbers are few in number, but intensely 
active and aggressive, dealing in assertion with- 
out reasoning or proof. Their vantage ground 
for harm is found in the lack of Scriptural 
knowledge and mental training on the part of 
the lay membership, assisted by the natural am- 
bition for up-to-dateness in thought movements, 
which afflicts an inconsiderable number of the 
ministry. But God is in and for His Church, 
and in His own time will exert the inherent 
power of His truth to remove this with all other 
hindrances to the assured advance of His King- 
dom on earth. 



We return to our chief purpose as intimated 
at the outset. 

The Second misstatement of the Seminary 



CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 9 

Address is the sole basis of the First. It con- 
sists in the square reversal of the only possible 
relation between experience and creed or belief. 
The grounds of support for this reversal have 
been exhausted in treating the ample citations 
from the Address embodied under the First mis- 
statement. We concentrate our straight de- 
nial of this fundamental misstatement as re- 
spects reasoning and argument in a single para- 
graph : 

TRUE RELATION OF EXPERIENCE TO CREED 

Many columns and pages of sinuous and 
specious reasoning have been recently written 
touching the relation of creed and experience, 
and in open advocacy of what is boastfully 
styled "New Theology." This unsustained 
reasoning is founded upon the supposition that 
experience is the source and basis, and so the 
arbiter and interpreter of the creed, as asserted 
by Ritschl. The fact is just the reverse. Of 
necessity the creed alone furnishes the ground 
and the means of the experience. The accepted 
creed, with its immediate results of regenera- 
tion and conversion, is the beginning of the 
new Christian life. Of this life experience is 
the continuance and development. The creed 
is actualized instantly upon its acceptance by 
the mind and heart. The experience is the 
after resultant of the continued force of the 



10 CHURCH CREEDS AND 

heart belief reinforced by the forward endeavor 
of the consecrated will. 1 

1 An extended review of President Adams's Address 
by Dr. Daniel S. Gregory (Bible Student and Teacber, 
Jan. 11), contains the following appreciation and en- 
dorsement : 

"The Rev. Dr. J. Glentworth Butler, author of the 
great 'Butler Bible Work,' who was Permanent Clerk 
of the New School General Assembly up to the merger 
of the New and Old School bodies in 1870, has lately 
given (in New York Observer for December 29, 1910), 
in a paper on 'Church Creeds and Christian Experience,' 
such an admirable and thoroughgoing exposure of the 
irrational, illogical and impossible qualities of this lat- 
est Ritschlian pronunciamento, that we venture to quote 
its statement of how the Modern View places 'the cart 
before the horse.' Dr. Butler says, and says incontro- 
vertibly on logical and rational grounds." (Citing above 
paragraph.) 

As a further exposure and refutation of this essential 
point in Pres. Brown's Address, we cite from the clos- 
ing portion of an exhaustive review by Dr. D. S. Greg- 
ory, in "the Bible Student and Teacher," March, 1910: 

"We all agree that our personal experience of the 
grace of Christ best qualifies us to confess Him, and 
that the work of His Spirit in our hearts alone enables 
us to set our seal to the doctrines of the Bible. But, is 
it true that our duty ends when we have confessed the 
little that we have learned by experience? Is every 
Christian limited in his profession to his own personal 
and private experience of the truth? If so, his con- 
fession will be meager indeed. Should we not confess 
together also what the Apostles and Prophets have 
taught, because they have taught it, even if we cannot 
say that we have fully, or perhaps at all, scaled the 
heights whereon they dwelt? May we not teach what 
Christ taught even before we 'verify' it, just because 
He taught it? Peter taught his converts to believe and 



CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 11 

DEFINITION OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE AND ITS 
CONFIRMING EFFECTS AND BLESSED RETURNS 

The Christian believer's practical experience 
may be de-fined as the present-life fruitage of 
Christian faith and practice ; eminently the re- 
sulting effects of Christian duties and graces — 
of daily exercised faith and hope and love, corn- 
confess what Paul taught, though it was 'hard to be un- 
derstood.' If he had followed Dr. Brown's plan, he 
would have bidden them 'verify' it out of their own 
experience before they said anything about it. 

"It may be taken as axiomatic, that alike in the region 
of religious facts and truths, there are some things that 
ice can never 'verify.' The Church is surely under ob- 
ligations, when necessity arises, to confess the facts 
which the Scriptures teach. How can we 'verify' out of 
our own experience, for instance, the facts of the life 
of Christ, — that He was born of the Virgin Mary and 
wrought His mighty works, that He suffered under 
Pontius Pilate and was crucified, dead and buried, and 
that His body was raised from the grave? Here we 
reach the root of Dr. Brown's error. He plainly means 
that 'religious experience* may reject, or call in ques- 
tion, the facts alleged by the sacred writers. Therefore 
he would not have in the creeds of Christendom un- 
qualified assertions of such facts, if these creeds are 
made a test of entrance to the ministry. Nor can the 
fundamental truths involved in God's plan of salvation 
be evolved from, or verified by, the 'light of nature,' 
whether in man or in creation; but must be received (as 
the Standards teach) by God's revelation as their only 
authoritative basis. 

"The failure to 'postulate' the Bible, in this authorita- 
tive sense, as the foundation of the Evangelical faith, 
is, as we take it, the basal failure in the Address, and 
one that marks and mars it throughout." 



12 CHURCH CREEDS AND 

bined with praise and thankfulness, meditation 
upon the Word and communion with the Spirit 
of God, and faithful service to man. And all 
these particulars proceed from heart accept- 
ance of the essential facts of the one Biblical 
creed. 

Since Christian experience is not an origi- 
nating source or force, since it is an effect and 
not a cause, it should not be appealed to in 
sane reasoning upon present-day questions as 
a source or a cause. Rut it should be counted 
as a means and condition that brings to the 
loyal-souled believer an abiding peace of mind, 
rest of heart and thankful joy — in God. For 
while there is no direct or causal connection, 
experience has a most impressive bearing upon 
the accepted creed — a wide and grateful func- 
tion that is both helpful and satisfying. While 
it cannot create, formulate, or interpret a single 
point of belief, it can and does confirm and 
establish, and that with ever cumulative force, 
the correctness and certitude of every point of 
faith asserted by the creed. This it does by 
reason and under the influence of its testing 
faculty continuously exercised through periods 
of months and years. Through this testing 
power of time a true experience deepens the 
conviction and strengthens the purpose of duty, 
it maintains steadfastness in forward progress, 
and by its ceaseless cheer augments the gains 



CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 13 

and enlarges the fruitage of our active Chris- 
tian life. 

Furthermore, experience proves its own genu- 
ineness by a conscious indwelling and inworking 
of God, by fervency and free utterance in 
prayer, by vivid impressions of great truths 
of the Word and actual appropriation of its 
promises, and by the abiding peace of Christ 
imparting quietness of spirit in the daily en- 
counter with trial and change. Thus experi- 
ence alone testifies to the genuineness of our 
Christian profession. It alone can impart to 
the believer an absolute assurance that he is 
"accepted in the Beloved" — that Christ is truly 
enthroned in his heart and that He is actively 
engaged for His follower's present and ever- 
lasting welfare. And in the sphere of Chris- 
tian fellowship the experience of every indi- 
vidual believer operates blessedly upon all others 
associated in worship and work. 



II 



"UP-TO-DATE-NESS"— DESIRABLE AND 
UNDESIRABLE 



The phrase, "up-to-date," is one of the minor 
products of the remarkable intellectual quicken- 
ing that has characterized the past half cen- 
tury. Because of its fitness its propriety has 
been sanctioned by general usage. It carries 
a plain and positive meaning ; in itself, express- 
ing the aim of a natural ambition to attain 
place among the foremost seekers and actors. 

But the spirit and aim of the seekers dis- 
closes and differentiates two widely diverse 
classes. These may be mildly distinguished as 
"desirable" and "undesirable." 

1. DESIRABLE "UP-TO-DATENESs" 

as it bears upon the attainment of knowledge 
in the sphere of religious truth and life, and 
upon the personal influence it brings. To this 
point the present writing is limited. 

The knowledge wisely sought and the per- 
sonal influence rightly gained and used must be 
♦ 14 



DESIRABLE AND UNDESIRABLE 15 

based upon clearly certified truth originating 
in and drawn from Divine sources ascertained 
through the established laws of human thought, 
and assured by faithful acceptance of and just 
reasoning upon the vital facts of Divine Revela- 
tion. Upon this solid foundation both knowl- 
edge and personal influence will be intrinsically 
worthy and ennobling, adapted to be helpful 
and uplifting to the individual and to society as 
respects the brief life on earth and the eternal 
life that follows. 

As defined by these conditions and faithfully 
carried out, "up-to-dateness" is not only de- 
sirable but is obligatory upon every believer. 
Its meaning and practice is indicated by Paul 
in his ringing declaration: "One thing I do, 
forgetting the things which are behind, and 
stretching forward to the things which are 
before, I press on toward the goal unto the 
prize of the high calling of God in Christ 
Jesus." 

£. UNDESIRABLE "UP-TO-DATENESS" 

To deal with this, solely with reference to 
thought and action pertaining to a religious 
life, is the writer's chief purpose. We seek to 
expose the underlying spirit of native conceit, 
with its malevolent and hurtful effects upon the 
individual obsessed by it, and upon all others 
subjected to his influence. And we boldly 



16 "UP-TO-DATE-NESS" 

affirm that inborn conceit underlies and is the 
generative force of that self-styled "Modern- 
ism" now aggressively rampant, which origi- 
nated in disbelief in God and His Word, — dis- 
belief and rejection of the Divinely established 
relations between God and man bearing upon 
man's spiritual condition in this world, and in 
the eternity upon which he has already entered. 
This "Modernism," born of and deriving all its 
power from an all mastering conceit, has now 
insidiously obtruded its malign influence and is 
doing its destructive work within the Church of 
God. 

A recent English writer says: "Modernism 
stands for the spirit that pervades the litera- 
ture of the present day, and its strident note is 
the personal tone. So exaggerated and fanati- 
cal has the personal note shown itself in its re- 
bellion against authority that critics of the old 
school declare that the British public has lost 
its capacity of appreciation and its stand- 
ards. . . . The modern critic reminds him- 
self that everything has been said about a given 
subject that can be said; that there is nothing 
that remains unknown excepting one thing — 
how the subject happens to affect me" 

Applied to present-day religious discussion, 
the personal note is tersely expressed by the 
questions : "What / think upon the vital teach- 
ings of the Bible"? "What my conscious- 



DESIRABLE AND UNDESIRABLE 17 

ness reports as to their truth and value"? 
This note may be synonymed and paraphrased 
as a sharp accentuation of the truth of Arch- 
bishop Leighton's quaint saying: "There is 
naturally in all men a kind of fancied infalli- 
bility — in themselves. 9 * This proud self -judg- 
ment of the values of God-given truths finds its 
most notable type and radical expression in a 
basal principle of the so-called "New Theology," 
which is the focal point of "Modernism" as ap- 
plied to the Bible History and its fundamental 
teachings. This principle is plainly affirmed 
by its two French and German inventors : That 
every human mind, untouched by the light and 
life of the Divine Spirit, inherently possesses 
power fully to apprehend and conclusively de- 
termine what is truth. In the very spirit of 
Pilate these inventors uphold this baseless 
speculation in utter ignorance of and so wholly 
ignoring the settled laws of thought through 
which alone knowledge of truth is discerned 
and certified; also, utterly failing to recognize 
the revealed facts touching the Redemptive re- 
lations of God with man, — facts which include 
and disclose all truth that bears upon the char- 
acter and destiny of man's immortal spirit. 
Upon this point, Prof. F. Bettex of Stuttgart, 
writes: "The fundamental principle or axiom 
upon which the verdict of modern critics is 
based is upon the idea that, as Renan expresses 



18 "UP-TO-DATENESS" 

it, reason is capable of judging all things, but 
is itself judged by nothing. This is surely a 
proud dictum, but an empty one. For reason, 
even as respects matters of this life, is not in ac- 
cord with itself. If it were so, whence comes all 
the strife and contention of men at home and 
abroad, in their places of business and their 
public assemblies, in art and science, in legisla- 
tion, religion and philosophy? Does it not all 
proceed from the conflicts of reason? The en- 
tire history of our race is the history of 
millions of men gifted with reason who have 
been in perpetual conflict one with another. 
Is it with such reason, then, that sentence is 
to be pronounced upon a Divinely given 
Book? . . . Reason alone has never in- 
spired men with great sublime conceptions of 
spiritual truth, whether in the way of dis- 
covery or invention ; but usually it has first 
rejected and ridiculed such matters. And just 
so it is with these rationalistic critics ; they have 
no appreciation or understanding of the high 
and sublime in God's Word. Moreover, they do 
not agree with one another. They unanimously 
deny the inspiration of the Bible, the Deity 
of Christ and of the Holy Spirit, also prophecy 
and miracles, the resurrection of the dead, the 
final judgment, heaven and hell. But when it 
comes to pretendedly sure results, not any two 
of them affirm the same things; and their 



DESIRABLE AND UNDESIRABLE 19 

numerous publications create a flood of disputa- 
ble, self -contradictor j and mutually destructive 
hypotheses." 

Furthermore, this self-conceived principle, 
claiming for every man a subjective capacity 
of apprehending truth, squarely defies reason 
and common sense, since it ignores all objective 
facts, scouts all reasoning, and in its dicta re- 
verses essential truths. It can only be the 
product of wilful ignorance and intellectual 
pride.. Darkening counsel with its blinding 
speculations and proofless assumptions, it un- 
dermines the faith of seekers after the light 
and peace of God. And this immeasurable 
harm is deliberately enacted that the doer may 
stand notoriously in the lime-light, and enjoy 
an ephemeral influence for a brief day. 

This destructive work is largely done through 
the press. In its chief topic it strikes at the 
very center of all essential truth by dealing 
superficially and ignorantly with the nature, 
life, and teaching of Christ. Many Secular 
and Biblical Encyclopedias and Dictionaries 
are deeply tainted with Liberal Doctrines. 
Some University issues, monthlies and volumes, 
— notably those of our four largest Institutions 
— are saturated with skilfully woven sophistries, 
and a few religious periodicals and weekly jour- 
nals are marred and shorn of their helpful in- 
fluence by immature speculations from unfur- 



20 "UP-TO-DATENESS" 

nished minds, — touching the mental processes 
of Christ, and the blended relation of His Di- 
vine and human nature. Some of these writers 
boldly claim the knowledge, by actual insight, 
of His infinite spirit. Others, under some cap- 
tion connected with the name of Jesus, super- 
ficially seek to exploit special characteristics of 
His human nature, utterly without regard to 
the hidden ties binding and coalescing the hu- 
man and divine, through the full knowledge of 
which alone His character, teaching, and life 
can be rightly apprehended and interpreted. 
In a word, these finite men assume and assert a 
partial or complete knowledge of the Infinite 
God, and openly deny His authority and His 
inspiration of the Word Revealed. Under the 
force of an exaggerated conceit one of these men 
has dared presumptuously to write : "Accepting 
the New Testament, Jesus evidently told us we 
are immortal. But two things rob this fact 
(sic) of all its influence. The first is that the 
traditional ideas of inspiration and author- 
ity have wholly perished with the thinking 
classes. . . . The second is that the age of 
authority is gone. Men insist on doing their 
own thinking on all subjects." Yet these writers 
must know their native impotence, dependence 
and accountability, — that from God's hands 
they come, by His power and goodness they re- 
tain their being, and to Him they must render 



DESIRABLE AND UNDESIRABLE 21 

account. This knowledge is assured by a double 
testimony within them, — the intense unbroken 
sense of powerless dependence, and the still but 
imperative voice of conscience. Yet they live 
on and achieve their work under the fearful 
propulsion of unresisted inborn conceit, without 
a thought or care of the fatal hurt that may 
be wrought in neighbor souls. 

And there are such imperiled neighbor souls! 
As every baseless religious doctrine of the past 
has had its adherents, so with these pernicious 
teachings. In the active sphere of every zeal- 
ous advocate there are a few souls afflicted with 
an abnormal ambition to stand abreast with a 
leader and to accept the newest thought. These 
followers are easily allured by the show of 
learning in the bald assertions or barren rhet- 
oric of self-posed leaders. Sometimes a fol- 
lower under the force of unchecked conceit and 
strong partisanship will outstrip the leader in 
extravagant assertion. 

Thus far we have called a halt for reflection, 
and sounded a note of warning for immature 
believers, who have been beguiled by this de- 
fiant present-day heresy. But the warning has 
broader application and suggests a gravely 
needed lesson to all true believers, touching the 
hurtful influence of native pride of intellect and 
self will. That the lesson calls for heed by 



22 "UP-TO-DATE-NESS" 

men in the pulpit as well as occupants of the 
pew is frankly charged by a brave editorial of 
a recent year : "The adulteration of the love of 
God and the love of man with love of self in 
the hearts of the preachers of the gospel con- 
tinues to-day as in all ages of the church the 
gravest obstacle to the power of preaching." 

And the same thoughtful consideration is 
demanded and may be wisely given to this clear 
warning by every individual believer. For in 
every living soul intellect, heart, and will are 
natively dominated by conceit. In every hu- 
man life it has played a fearfully hindering 
part. In a few strong-willed men self-respect- 
ing intelligence has availed to weaken its influ- 
ence by a measurably successful struggle. But 
for effective resistance and actual release from 
its power no human force is adequate. Only 
the persistently entreated Spirit of God can 
so transform and energize the heart and sub- 
due the will as to evoke habitual meekness of 
mind, lowliness of heart and abasement of will. 
The Scripture counsel and injunction is clear 
and definite : "Let him that thinketh he standeth 
take heed lest he fall." "Put on a heart of 
lowliness, meekness, longsuffering." "Yea, all 
of you gird yourselves with humility; for God 
giveth grace to the humble." In reinforce- 
ment of this Divine counsel and command let 
the believer ever remember that humility is the 



DESIRABLE AND UNDESIRABLE 23 

basal and essential grace underlying faith and 
hope and love and peace and joy, and with 
these coronal graces abides forever in the ulti- 
mate heavenly life. 



Ill 

CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM OF 
TO-DAY 

Our purpose is, introductorily to refer to 
the grounds of the knowledge and reasonable 
certitude of truth, and to present Revealed 
Facts of God's Redemptive dealings with man 
as embodying the essentials of all religious 
truth, and as furnishing the sole subject-matter 
of investigation; then to use these points in a 
full development of our theme; — buttressing 
the whole with careful definitions and sound 
reasonings. 

The acquisition and use of knowledge is the 
designed purpose and inherent function of the 
intellect. The reports of our mental facul- 
ties must be trustworthy and the evidence ac- 
quired through them must provide the basis of 
all knowledge. "Truth, or exact knowledge," 
writes a profound and accurate thinker, "is 
reached whenever the mental view, or 'thought' 
clearly corresponds to the 'thing,' or object 
of knowledge. Knowledge comes with the 
agreement of subjective apprehension with ob- 
jective reality. . . . The reason for certi- 
24, 



OF TO-DAY £5 

tude in knowledge is to be found, in all cases, 
in evidence, or something that makes clear the 
correspondence between the mental apprehen- 
sion and the objective reality, the thought and 
the thing." The knowledge of truth, there- 
fore, is conditioned upon both an observing 
mind and an object or fact to be observed. 
For the knowledge of religious truth there must 
be a subjective human thinker and appropriate, 
worthy objective facts to be thought upon. On 
one side a natively sinful, immortal spirit facing 
a coming judgment and an eternal destiny, 
and on the other certain momentous facts tell- 
ing of a provided Redemption from the con- 
demning guilt and might of sin, and a restora- 
tion to righteousness and childship with God. 

That these vital facts are Divinely Revealed 
appears from the certainty that God is the only 
authenticated and authoritative Revealer, since 
He is the only All-Knower, and from the fur- 
ther fact that human consciousness can neither 
generate nor formulate any particular of truth 
or any form of belief, because the human mind 
is finite and natively uninformed and the heart 
is averse to any form of belief that unpleasantly 
affects its own selfish enjoyments. Further- 
more, in our ascertainment of these Divinely 
Revealed truths "we have got to recognize the 
fact that there are settled laws of thought, 
valid for all rational beings in all ages and all 



26 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM 

worlds. To ignore them is to destroy the very 
possibility of thought. . . . Hence no man 
has a right to his opinion unless it is right; 
i. e., unless his conclusion has been reached in 
conformity to these universally and eternally 
valid laws of thought." 

With these conditional points in thought, we 
proceed with the affirmation that these Re- 
vealed Facts touching man's Divine Redemp- 
tion include the entire sphere of religious truth. 
And it should be sharply remembered that this 
sphere of truth has bounds, and is limited and 
made exclusive by them. From that sphere all 
error, even the least that antagonizes truth, 
is of necessity excluded. The failure to recog- 
nize the imperative exclusiveness of truth has 
been and is the source and cause of vital mis- 
reading and hurtful misstatement of the funda- 
mental elements of true Christian character, 
belief, and life. And this chiefly as these ele- 
ments are related to and affected by the esti- 
mate and treatment of Jesus Christ. The 
supreme truth and fact of Divine Revelation 
is His full Deity and assigned Agency for the 
Godhead in the disclosure of all truth, and in 
His Redemptive office work for man. The one 
chief test of orthodoxy, or right thinking and 
believing, is found in the answer to the Mas- 
ter's own question, "What think ye of Christ?" 
The very term, "Christian," is limited, accord- 



OF TO-DAY n 

ing to the Scriptures, to those who accept His 
Divine Messiahship. In both Testaments Mes- 
siah (or Anointed) is the identical equivalent 
of Christ, and refers to His Divine anointment 
as Prophet, Priest and King. It clearly fol- 
lows that only the man and the organization 
that recognizes and receives Christ in these 
three Offices — that accepts Him as the only Re- 
vealer of God and Teacher of Truth, as the 
only Offerer and Offering for the forgiveness 
of sin and bestowal of righteousness, and as the 
Supreme, Eternal Sovereign of the human 
spirit; in a word, that recognizes and acknowl- 
edges Christ, the Eternal Son, as the Repre- 
sentative Actor for the Triune Godhead in 
man's redemption, — only that man and that 
organized institution can justly claim to be 
called Christian. 

At this point we distinctly note, that it is 
the attitude assumed in reference to these su- 
preme truths of Revelation that discriminates 
and divides the multitude of avowed disciples 
that are denominated "Conservative," from the 
few who array themselves under the title of 
"Liberal." Our subject-matter, then, we find in 
the Revealed Truths of the Word of God. 

In past discussions prominent use has been 
made of the words "doctrine" and "dogma." 
Because of this prominence and the sharp an- 



28 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM 

tagonisms connected with their use by the war- 
ring schools a bitter distate has been generated 
in many minds; and as these terms are not 
synonymous with "truth" they may wisely be 
eliminated from present-day discussion. We 
therefore use the definitely descriptive word 
"truth." Furthermore, it will greatly help our 
consideration to realize that all revealed truths 
are actual facts, or bases of fact, each truth 
charged with vital potency. To us, as re- 
spects our spiritual condition, more than truths 
they are vital facts. As such they are believed 
and rested upon, or denied and helplessly re- 
jected. 

The immeasurable value of these Revealed 
Facts is confirmed by many Divine promises 
and commands : E. G. — / Tim. ii, J^, "God our 
Saviour, who would have all men to be saved 
and come to the knowledge of the truth." Jw. 
xvi, 13, "The Spirit of truth shall guide you 
into all the truth." II Tim. i, 13, "Hold fast 
the pattern of sound words which thou hast 
heard from me." II Thess. ii, 15, "Stand fast 
and hold the traditions which ye were taught." 

Knowledge of "the truth as it is in Jesus," 
i. e., knowledge of revealed facts pertaining to 
His Redemptive work, is the supreme aim and 
endeavor of all honest search and discussion. 
Every spiritual truth is an objective fact of 
pure Revelation, and must be so studied and 



OF TO-DAY £9 

interpreted. Its interpretation cannot be 
thought of subjectively, by a natively ignorant 
finite mind. It must be studied and can only 
be interpreted in accordance with established 
laws of thought, under the guidance and with 
the aid of the Spirit of truth. 

With these preliminary considerations as es- 
sential conditions, and holding their organic 
connections and bearing clearly in our thought, 
we reach the direct exposition of our theme. 

First, we seek to define and find the true 
place of Conservatism in its proper present-day 
use, as distinguished from its meaning and use 
in past periods. 

The term has been applied to all generations 
since the Reformation. Its reference has been 
first to the great pioneer Reformers, and then 
to the successive scholars who have given their 
lives to Bible study and exposition. The 
world's debt to these giants of stalwart brain 
and immovable purpose cannot be measured by 
human computation. But these world reform- 
ing teachers were imperfect men, differing 
greatly in mental gifts, in fullness of training, 
in temperamental characteristics, in natural and 
acquired bias and partisan spirit. And these 
differences naturally led to diverse and antago- 
nistic interpretations of Scripture, and to the 
formulation of opposing doctrines and philo- 



30 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM 

sophic theories. The unavoidable result was 
conflict, and the establishment of antagonistic 
schools of thought and creed, with accompany- 
ing bitterness and estrangement. This con- 
troversy was maintained through successive gen- 
erations. In the course of time there were 
evolved not only diverse essential doctrines, but 
differences in matters of church polity and in 
trivial points of belief and conduct. This 
brings us to our own time and accounts for the 
hundreds of church names, forms of organiza- 
tion, and crudities of belief. 

Instinctively repelling, unproven, and rea- 
sonably questionable points of doctrine em- 
bodied in the early creeds naturally and rightly 
call for revision and restatement. And the 
process of such revision has been carried on 
through the conflicts of the schools until in this 
wiser day of larger knowledge and clearer 
thinking a consensus of belief has been reached 
by the Evangelical Churches, and is expressed 
in the Present-day Conservatism. This in- 
cludes every essential truth of the one almost 
universally accepted Biblical Creed. From this 
Creed no vital doctrine has been omitted, or 
shorn of its Divine force. 

As a result of this revision and consensus, 
the long mooted and unproven points justly ac- 
credited to the Old Conservatism have been re- 
tired and have become almost unheard, except 



OF TO-DAY 31 

when cited as a blind to enforce a specious argu- 
ment by the wakeful opponents of the true, 
Biblical present-day Conservatism. 

A prominent cause of the transformation of 
the Old into the New Conservatism is the swift 
advance, during the last decade, in the spirit 
of unity in Christian fellowship and service on 
the part of all Evangelical Churches. This 
wonderful, Divinely wrought fact has brought 
rejoicing into the hearts of all God's true chil- 
dren. In this land the effective Churches have 
entered organically into Federative service for 
their common Lord. And they have subordi- 
nated all minor matters of belief and polity, 
and virtually accepted one and the same Bibli- 
cal Creed as the basis of united ministry. 

This creed distinguishes and fully describes 
the New, Present-day, Conservatism. This 
pure, heavenly "form of sound words" imparts 
to it spirit, breadth, strength, and joyous free- 
dom. So it gladly welcomes this day of larger 
knowledge and clearer, broader thinking, with 
the cumulative sources of subject-matter that 
have been added and carefully searched by suc- 
cessive generations of scholars. It willingly 
(accepts all conclusions that have borne the 
test of unbiased and thorough investigation in 
accordance with the laws of thought and the 
canons of just and sound reasoning, and as 
these conclusions are sustained by adequate evi- 



3£ CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM 

dence. This conscious freedom and largeness 
of thought and this conviction of truthful be- 
lief based upon correct reasoning and conclusive 
evidence has been unwrought by the intrinsic 
greatness, the assured certitude, and the exact 
fitness to man's need of its Scriptural beliefs 
and their accompanying rich and satisfying 
experiences. 

In its subject-matter of belief modern Con- 
servatism holds unreservedly and unwaveringly 
to the vital facts of the Christian religion as set 
forth in the Bible. 

As the sole source of its beliefs it accepts 
the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments 
exactly as these have been preserved to us, un- 
diminished and unchanged, as a Revelation 
from God, in itself forever complete, ("The 
Spirit does not add a single truth to the 
Bible." — Chalmers.) — "a communication of 
truths concerning the Divine nature and 
the Kingdom of God, which could not 
otherwise be known, an unveiling of that which 
already exists in the world of unseen realities 
and in the Divine will and purpose, which man 
could only know as God is pleased to disclose 
it." It receives these Scriptures as "given by 
inspiration of God" — God-breathed — as Paul 
declares. By inspiration is meant that "the 
Bible is infallibly authoritative only on that 
single and definite line where authoritative 



OF TO-DAY 33 

guidance was needed, that it authoritatively 
teaches us, what God is, what God has done to 
save us, and what we must do to be saved." 

We condense the sovereign, vital facts of this 
Divine Revelation — the Essentials of a genuine 
Christian faith, — under the comprehensive cap- 
tion: 

THE GODHEAD AND DIVINE REDEMPTION 

1. The Nature of God: a Personal Spirit; 
Living and Life-giving; Self-Existent, Self- 
Moved, and Self-Sufficient ; the only true God. 
Possessing Unbounded Duration ; Unlimited 
Knowledge and Wisdom; Infinite Power; Om- 
nipresence; Unchangeableness. In whom in- 
heres in absolute perfection : Holiness ; Right- 
eousness in Dealing; Justice in Administering 
Law and Grace ; Truth and Faithfulness ; Good- 
ness in Providence; Grace to undeserving and 
mercy to ill-deserving; All, save Holiness, sum- 
med up in Love, infinite and everlasting. 

£. The Godhead an Eternal Trinity, with 
Intercommunion Life. Only disclosed in the 
Threefold Office-Work of the Divine Persons in 
Human Redemption. 

3. Jesus Christ, the Eternal Son of God. In 
both Testaments disclosed as the Revealer of 
God, and Agent of the Godhead in Revelation, 
Creation, Providence and Redemption. 



34 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM 

His Incarnation as the God-Man. Luke 
(i, 30-35) and Matthew (i, 18-21) distinctly 
affirm His conception by the Holy Ghost and 
birth of the Virgin Mary. And both facts thus 
affirmed by two inspired writers plainly and 
signally stand out as essential points of Chris- 
tian faith since they underlie and are founda- 
tion facts upon which rest all other truths and 
facts that give existence and virility to that 
faith. 

His Threefold Office-Work as Messiah 
(Anointed) i. e., Christ. In both Testaments 
He is disclosed as Prophet, Priest and King. 
As Prophet He is affirmed and claims to be the 
source and Teacher of all truth. Jn. ocvi, H. 
As Priest, both offerer and offering. "Christ 
died for our sins." "He laid down His life." 
"Enduring the cross," "despising the shame" 
"for the joy set before Him" in "saving the 
lost" ; thus fulfilling the Father's will, and at- 
testing the Father's love for an estranged 
world, and endowing every believer with eternal 
life. So each of us trusting in Him, may be 
assured, that "there is therefore now no con- 
demnation," and may rejoicingly say with 
Paul, "who loved me and gave Himself up for 
me." As Priest, too, "He ever liveth to make 
intercession for us." As King, He is the Eter- 
nal Sovereign of an ever abiding Kingdom of 
grace and glory, into which He is pledged to 



OF TO-DAY 35 

bring us that we may be forever with our Re- 
deeming Lord. 

His superhuman Words and Deeds, incon- 
testibly attesting His supernatural Wisdom and 
Might, and manifesting a Divine love, and a 
marvellous mastery over His own natural laws, 
in the healing of incurable diseases, in restoring 
life to the dead, in subduing by a word the 
tempests of air and sea, and in forgiving sins 
and imparting peace and hope to penitent souls. 

In the crowning miracles of His Resurrec- 
tion and Ascension, with their ample historical 
proof through the testimony of many credible 
witnesses. 

In His Heavenly Enthronement as revealed 
by "the disciple whom Jesus loved" and most 
intimately communed with on earth. 

And in His final office as Kingly Judge af- 
firmed and outlined by Himself. Mat. xxv. 

4. The Eternal Spirit of God, and His 
Agency in Man's Divine Redemption. 

His preliminary and needful work in unfold- 
ing a complete Divine Revelation through the 
agency of human writers — a work which was 
finished with the "Revelation" of John. 

His supreme Office-Work upon and within the 
human spirit. In His approach to and action 
upon the soul of man the Holy Spirit invaria- 
bly uses as means the truths or facts of Christ's 
Redeeming work. These saving truths He un- 



36 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM 

folds, impresses, makes vivid and convincing, 
and this without a breath of compulsion. Em- 
ploying only the motive power of these sublime 
and momentous facts, He seeks to draw the soul 
to appropriate self-action. And when by the 
impulsive force of a vividly impressed infinite 
Divine love He has won the yielding soul to 
penitence and self-surrender, and to the plight 
of faith and love and service to the inviting 
Christ, then it is that the Spirit's crowning 
work of new-creating and life-giving is silently 
wrought within the faintly trusting soul. 
There takes place a spiritual quickening from 
death to life, a radical transformation of char- 
acter, a restoration of the lost likeness of God, 
and a renewed childship and fellowship with 
Him. 

Following this act of regeneration and spirit- 
ual transformation is the process of sanctifica- 
tion by the Holy Spirit, the progressive com- 
pletion of His work by daily renewal and in- 
vigoration of the inwrought spiritual life. 
In this "renewing day by day" the Spirit uses 
the same truths with ever increasing emphasis, 
together with the added power of inspired 
prayer and sympathetic Christian fellowship. 
And He is pledged to "perfect that which He 
has begun until the day of our Lord Jesus 
Christ." 

With these primary vital functions of the 



OF TO-DAY 37 

Hoi}- Spirit bearing upon the believer's experi- 
ence, we complete our compact summary of the 
revealed facts of the Bible that are essential 
to Christian faith and experience. And these 
supremely momentous facts, held with more or 
less completeness and fullness of belief as meas- 
ured by the individual's knowledge and experi- 
ence, are embodied in the views and beliefs of 
the modern Conservative. Standing upon 
these vital disclosures of Divine Revelation he 
is "steadfast, immovable, always abounding in 
the work" of his Lord and Saviour. Under 
the influence of these assured, eternal truths he 
is ever looking and longing for broader views 
and fuller knowledge of his relations with God 
and the issues of his daily life on earth in their 
bearing upon his changeless destiny in the 
heavenly abiding. 

And we may add, that these high, sustain- 
ing and fruit-bearing beliefs constitute the 
substance and heart of the one Biblical creed 
that is now uniting in spirit and engaging in 
common service Evangelical believers of every 
Church name. 

We proceed to consider 

PRESENT-DAY LIBERALISM 

— in its relation to Bible history and teach- 
ing — as now aggressively active inside of 
Church lines. We seek fairly to exhibit its 



38 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM 

basal principles and theories, generated long 
ago outside these lines, but adopted and ac- 
tively propagated by avowed Christian teach- 
ers and writers. A prominent New York pas- 
tor and effective writer has said: "To-day the 
only infidelity worth reckoning is that which 
masquerades in the livery of heaven. 
The deniers are ministers of Christ, under oath 
to preach the very doctrines which they deny." 
Foremost of all, itself the underlying root of 
all the rest, stands the comparatively 



This had its birth and initiation in specula- 

1 "The doctrine of Evolution as it is now current in 
popular literature is one-tenth bad Science and nine- 
tenths bad Philosophy." — Geo. Fred. Wright. 

"Pushed to its logical outcome it comprises ethics and 
all the sentiments from which our Christian civilization 
starts. It destroys the self-conscious agent, and sub- 
stitutes for it blind materialism. Its logical outcome is 
mechanical atheism, unsettled morals, and denial of im- 
mortality or personality to man or God." — Pres. Noah 
Porter. 

"In evolution, as an orderly development and advance, 
every intelligent man believes. But as a process of un- 
interrupted differentiation of being, under natural laws 
and from inherent forces, it is an unproved theory, 
with all the evidence squarely against it. There is one 
force in literature and history, of which evolution takes 
no account, and which it cannot explain. It is person- 
ality — strong, self-poised, determined personality. It is 
a dominating force in literature and history, and per- 
sonality is the absolute antithesis of evolution. Un- 



OF TO-DAY 39 

tive interpretation of the method of Creation. 
The true story is plainly given in the Bible. 
Its first sentence attests the entire record as 
a Divine Revelation, and itself proves its su- 
pernatural source and superhuman authorship, 
and therefore the truth of its contents. For 
the stupendous fact it asserts is impossible of 
conception, much less of invention, by a created, 
finite mind. 

This self-attested Record declares that at 
the fiat of God "the earth brought forth grass, 
herbs and fruit trees, each bearing fruit after 
its kind"; also "living creatures for the water, 
the air, and the earth, each multiplying after 
its kind." This was the Divinely directed and 
empowered method of the production and con- 
tinuance of the animate products of the fertile 
earth and the animal creation, each produced 
through the generative power imparted by God 
acording to its kind. This was God's way of 
development — the extent and limit of the term 
Evolution in its only true definition. 

proved in science, demonstrably false in literature, art 
and history, the theory of evolution cannot be accepted 
as a canon of criticism." — A. T. F. Behrends. 

"By the evolutionary conception the very idea of sin, 
in the Christian sense, is essentialy altered. Sin is no 
longer the voluntary defection of a creature who had 
the power to remain sinless. The very possibility of 
sinless development is excluded. Sin becomes a natural 
necessity of man's ascent: a something unavoidable in 
his history." — Borden P. Bowne. 



40 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM 

The first form and application of the modern 
theory openly denied and rejected these plain 
averments of the Divine Word. It directly 
antagonized them by its claim that original 
life-germs came into existence by natural 
processes, and that through these life-germs 
lower species of plants and animals may be 
and have been transmuted into higher. It 
thus affirmed the existence of productive life 
force without any conceivable cause or agency 
in its production. And this is the sole root 
principle, the colossal, impossible, speculative 
notion, that defines and constitutes the entire 
structure of the modern theory of Evolution — 
a theory that is instantaneously rejected by 
sane reason, and unsustained by a shred of 
evidence. Its sole supporting assertion that 
"the human race began low down and through 
countless ages worked itself up to its present 
civilized state" has been overwhelmingly si- 
lenced by biologists, geologists, and archae- 
ologists. These scientists confirm the state- 
ment of the Divine Record: "God made man in 
His own image." 

This first introductory form and applica- 
tion of the Theory naturally led to the substi- 
tution of human speculation for Divine affirma- 
tion in the investigation of spiritual truth and 
experience. It devitalized the Scriptural mean- 
ing of regeneration and sanctification, substi- 



OF TO-DAY 41 

tuting for these essentials of Christian experi- 
ence mere ethical improvement in personal 
character. It deprived its blinded adherent 
of the capacity to apprehend and the sensi- 
bility to respond to the supreme needs and de- 
mands of his immortal spirit, thus producing 
a heart-hardening unfaith toward God and ulti- 
mate soul loss. 

As the Evolution theory is baseless and there- 
fore false, as applied to Creation, it is equally 
false and even more effectively harmful in its 
further application to the essential truths and 
historic statements of the Bible. This will be 
made clear as we proceed to consider the definite 
points of such further application. 

The first, most bitter and fatal product of 
this Evolutionary root we find in the 

DENIAL AND ELIMINATION OP THE SUPER- 
NATURAL 

The realm of the Supernatural reaches and 
includes the vast time-range of human History, 
the entire Bible product, the existence and na- 
ture of God and His Working in Creation, 
Providence and Redemption. As inclusive 
prominent facts connected with man's Redemp- 
tion we distinguish the Deity, Incarnation, su- 
perhuman words and deeds, Resurrection and 
Ascension of Christ; the agency of the Holy 



42 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM 

Spirit in regeneration and sanctification ; and 
man's corresponding consciousness of the for- 
giveness and peace of God, and his realized ex- 
perience of reversed judgments, desires, affec- 
tions, aims, and life purposes, from self to 
God. 

The basis of the Supernatural is found in 
its absolute necessity as an imperial condition 
for this revelation of God and His redeeming 
action toward men and for the corresponding 
spiritual experience of men. Without the su- 
pernatural working of God the disclosure 
of His just and loving rule over men, and 
His Incarnate entrance among men for their 
salvation could not possibly have been ac- 
complished. 

More than this from our own standpoint: 
The sense of the Supernatural permeates the 
atmosphere we breathe. We acknowledge and 
feel it in the consciousness of utter dependence 
with which we are confronted in hours of weak- 
ness, ignorance, doubt and darkness which 
overshadow and pain our spirits in life's try- 
ing changes, its sicknesses and losses. These 
hours of unrest press upon us the subconscious 
conviction that there is an unseen Supreme Con- 
troller of all beings and events. That this 
Controller is also our ever present Overseer 
and Judge of our moral acting we know by 
the persistent, convincing testimony of our in- 



OF TO-DAY 43 

hering conscience. And this consciousness of 
an ever wakeful supernatural presence and 
power imparts a higher value and greater dig- 
nity to our life as it brings us closer to God 
and into truer affinity with His revealed 
thoughts and designs. 

Denial of the Supernatural in its broadest 
phase, means the deliberate casting out of the 
area of the Universe the conception of God as 
Creator, Sustainer and Ruler, and the substi- 
tution of a blind, heartless Fate, with an aim- 
less adamant will in control of worlds and ani- 
mate creatures, achieving for all a destiny of 
annihilation or of unlighted, hopeless, and abid- 
ing doom. Even when modified by speculative 
admissions this denial means the extermination 
of all true satisfying religious aspiration and 
hope. For it blots out every essential truth 
of the New Testament Gospel, every teaching 
of the Christian system of faith, and so utterly 
extinguishes the very conception of Chris- 
tianity. 

And these deniers of the Supernatural have 
never attempted to formulate an iota of evi- 
dence in support of their impious denial. Their 
entire evidential fabric is made up of their own 
empirical assumptions. 

As the next emanation from the Evolutionary 
root came a European invention: 



44 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM 

THEORY OF AUTONOMOUS MIND 

The Root Theory, with its effective co-agent, 
Pure Naturalism, has brought us a God — or 
an impersonal, nameless Energy — credited with 
simple creative power at the outset, but ever 
since caged and inert within His own world — 
machine; displacing Him by another creative 
force — whence derived no one knows — inhering 
to the machine, whereby members of the ani- 
mate creation are subjected to transmutation 
and advance of species. By its co-agent it 
empties religious truth of its vitality by elimi- 
nating the Spirit of God from all connection 
with His own inspired disclosures. 

Now the basal Theory takes a natural for- 
ward step by putting man — every man — in the 
place of the Spirit of God as an interpreter of 
His own revealed spiritual truth — making a 
finite, ignorant man's consciousness together 
with his native inclinations and tastes, the de- 
termining authority and judge of the inmost 
meaning of the Divinely revealed vital realities 
that bind man to God and decide his eternal 
destiny. 

This further step fully defines and exposes 
the significance of the phrase coined by one 
of its inventors, "Autonomous Mind." Ex- 
pressing it in his own philosophic terms, 
Sabatier wrote: "To say that the mind is 



OF TO-DAY 45 

autonomous is to say that it finds the su- 
preme norm of its ideas and acts not out- 
side of itself, but within itself, in its very 
constitution. It is to say that the consent 
of the mind itself is the prime condition and 
foundation of all certitude." "So," comments 
an acute writer, "by virtue of the autonomy of 
mind truth becomes mere matter of opinion. 
As a man thinks it, so it is — to him at least. 
Of course it can have no validity for the other 
man, or for another day." And he adds : "The 
question, whether there are any external objec- 
tive realities corresponding to the truths of 
theology and answering to the needs of the soul, 
is a question of fact. The response to it is 
to be found, not in the dicta of the autonomous 
mind, but through the investigation of matters 
of fact. The method is inductive, and it must 
take in dll the facts." 

For the differing form of Ritschl's statement 
and fuller refutation of the theory we refer to 
page 104 ff. We only repeat the estimate of 
Dr. W. C. Gray (Interior, Dec, '97) : "The 
peculiarity of the Impressionist School, of 
which Ritschl was the founder, is that it makes 
nothing of historic or scientific facts or re- 
alities. It is not things as they are or were 
that have value, but the impression which the 
whole makes upon the imagination or feeling. 
It is a sort of idealism which denies the reality 



46 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM 

of anything. . . . There are two sources of 
knowledge; the external or objective, and the 
internal or subjective. The old theology ac- 
cepts an external standard in the infallible 
Word of God, while the new accepts only an 
internal standard found in the subjective judg- 
ments of the individual. It asserts a new doc- 
trine of infallibility to be found in the inner 
consciousness of the believer." We add: To a 
sane mind, rightly regarding all religious 
truths as merely formulated statements of 
facts relating to God and man, and therefore 
demanding objective treatment, this purely 
subjective theory seems to exclude itself from 
the region of reason and common sense as it 
has neither practical starting point nor solid 
resting place. 

As the next, most tangible, development in 
its Evolutionary progress, Liberalism assails 
the integrity and vitality of the Bible. Its 
sole teaching aim is to show men what 
there is to be doubted and believed. Under its 
assumed title of "Higher" Criticism, it has 
been putting in and aggressively pushing for- 
ward its abnormal work of Disintegration, In- 
terpolation, Mutilation, and destructive Rever- 
sal of the historic statements and spiritual 
teachings of the Word of God. This is a 
natural forward step from the theory of self- 



OF TO-DAY 47 

determination by a finite mind of the meaning 
of truths affirmed by an infinite mind. From 
the right of interpreting particular truths its 
advocates easily expanded their claim to a com- 
plete revision of the entire Biblical contents. 
In their endeavor to fill so large a contract, 
applying human measures to the apprehension 
of God and His Word, they constructed new 
literary canons out of their own necessities and 
sympathies, by which to interpret the breadth 
and depth, and determine the genuine authority 
of the Word of God. Then, rating the Word 
as a human production, they proceeded to take 
it to pieces, to analyze its make-up, authorship, 
and contents, to displace and mutilate its parts, 
to elide clauses, verses, and whole sections and 
Books, and reset the dislocated remnants to 
accord with their own notions, inclinations and 
tastes. As instruments to give seeming sup- 
port to their devastating work upon Old Testa- 
ment History and Prophecy, these shrewd in- 
ventors introduced to mature birth many hypo- 
thetical redactors, of ghostly presence, but 
gifted with magical editorial discernment of 
genuine original text. 

And this preposterous, colossal claim — of 
human right and authority to displace, muti- 
late and reverse the historic facts and spiritual 
truths given through Divine inspiration by 
Divine love to bring to men eternal life — this 



48 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM 

astounding claim rests to-day, as it has from 
its initiation by the infidel and profligate 
Astruc, upon assertion buttressed in later 
years by an utterly unsustained assumption of 
superior scholarship. This, their arrogant 
boast, filing the place of reasoning and proof, 
always prominent in every advertisement and 
writing, has been and is even more obtrusively 
to-day, the only ground or plea upon which 
they accentuate their claim for a wide and 
general following. They have never presented 
other evidence than their own unaided conclu- 
sions. And upon every point in these conclu- 
sions there is disagreement and antagonism 
among themselves. They only agree in the com- 
mon act of mutilating and reversing the only 
enlightening and saving truth from Heaven. 
Their claim of exclusive "Higher" scholarship 
is equally unfounded, for to-day the number 
of eminent conservative scholars greatly ex- 
ceeds that of really learned and able advocates 
of the disintegrating criticism, while the aver- 
age scholars who hold the Bible intact and all 
of God exceed the denying critics by many tens 
of thousands in the world-area of Christendom. 
Furthermore, the Literary method of the 
Radical theorists is arbitrary, sophistical and 
delusive. Its supreme and vital defect lies in 
the patent fact that it is purely subjective. 
Its subject-matter is mainly made up of hypo- 



OF TO-DAY 49 

thetical suggestion and conjecture, modified by 
literary taste, without a shred of external data 
of fact as foundation and proof. Its conceits 
and extravagances are "without check or limit 
beyond the prepossessions and caprice of the 
critics." And the "process of literary analysis 
is absolutely unprecedented. Nothing in all 
literature, ancient or modern, presents a parallel 
to the critics proposed reconstruction." Prof. 
Schodde says of its basal Documentary theory : 
"It is undeniably a purely subjective produc- 
tion, without a scintilla of external evidence, 
being founded solely upon subjective analysis 
and combination." 

The crowning product of the combined Evo- 
lutionary emanations, surely resulting in an 
undermined faith and an imperiled soul appears 
in a self-styled 

"new theology" 

An able writer has just now described this 
final product of Liberalism as "the system of 
thought of those — so far as they have any sys- 
tem — who accept the results of the Radical 
Criticism and the Evolutionary Philosophy as 
applied to the Bible and Theology." He adds : 
"The Evolutionary Philosophy yields the Radi- 
cal Criticism, and both have begotten the New 
Theology." 



50 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM 

The title, "New Theology," is a double mis- 
nomer, as the system it propounds is Old, and 
ignores God. With greater consistency and 
courtesy to the world-transforming efficacy of 
a past Christianity, Dr. Eliot calls the identi- 
cal system "The Religion of the Future." But 
it is exclusively a system of incomplete morals. 
for the guidance of men in their personal and 
social relations during this life only; and it is 
all borrowed from the Bible teachings. Since 
there is no God in its alliance, it is no religion. 
For the term, "religion," is properly defined as 
"a belief binding the spiritual nature of man 
to a supernatural being on whom he is con- 
scious that he is dependent" ; and it must in- 
clude man's entire life, present and eternal, in 
his relations to God and to man. 

The "New Theology" is amply defined in the 
negatives employed by its advocates, and it has 
never constructed any positives. There is a 
seeming difference in the form and force of its 
expressions, but all have an identical mean- 
ing. Dr. Lyman Abbott, whose contributions 
to the cause of humanity and social progress 
have been greatly helpful, as an open advocate 
of the New Theology, endorses the extreme ap- 
plications of the Evolutionary Philosophy. 
Concerning the supernatural he writes : "The 
fundamental basis of the old theology is ex- 
pressed by the word supernatural. . . . The 



OF TO-DAY 51 

New Theology denies absolutely the old as- 
sumed distinction between the natural and the 
supernatural." He further says: "The New 
Theology questions the basis of authority, and 
questions so effectually that neither the Bible 
nor the Church speaks to even the Church- 
man with the authority with which they spoke a 
century ago." And again: "Jesus Christ is 
not the source of religion. Religion existed 
among peoples who never heard of Jesus 
Christ. He did not come to found a religion, 
nor to found a special form of religion." 

And the British heresiarch, R. J. Campbell, 
affirms the same system of unfaith in terse par- 
ticulars when he says : "We believe that Jesus 
was divine ; so are we. Every man is a po- 
tential Christ." "The belief that Jesus suf- 
fered some mysterious penalty and took away 
sin is a moral mischief." "Sin itself is a quest 
after God." A noted London editor (the 
Clarion) boasting himself as an "agnostic so- 
cialist" and affiliating himself with Mr. Camp- 
bell, declared that "the New Theology em- 
braced nothing that he denied and denied noth- 
ing that he believed." 

For a third "specimen" denial of a Self- 
Revealed Triune, Redeeming God we refer to 
the already forgotten scheme of so-called 
"New Religion" evolved by Dr. Charles Eliot. 
The scheme, for we cannot call it a system of 



5£ CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM 

thought, is as old as Cain, who rejected the 
merciful intervention of God. It is only one 
of the recent manifestos of the multitudes that 
have appeared in all human generations. Nor 
is it a religion, since, instead of re-binding 
man to his Divine Creator and Moral Ruler, 
it severs him from God. The New York Times 
"fears that no martyr will ever give his blood 
as the seed of Dr. Eliot's new religion" ; while 
to the New York Tribune, "it seems like a re- 
ligion of aristocracy, one for the few superior 
men, the supermen." In substance, detail, 
and effects, it is identical with the New The- 
ology. Both alike hold to the fatal limitation 
of human life to the present-time existence, to 
an exclusive theory of negations of all Re- 
vealed Facts. And both never even hint at any 
rational constructive system to replace their 
own destructive theories. 

To the great grief of all Evangelical writers, 
especially to the lovers of the Union Seminary 
as it was, the Rev. Dr. William Adams Brown, 
the Professor of Systematic Theology, has now 
openly avowed to the world, through the Har- 
vard Theological Review (Jan. 1911), in a 
summarized statement, his entire sympathy 
with and acceptance of the System of Lib- 
eralism, or "New Theology," in its whole length 
and breadth and depth. The issue, in all its 
momentous magnitude, is between the old, long 



OF TO-DAY 53 

established, impregnably based and fortressed 
upon the Revealed Word of God, and held to- 
day by the immense multitude of learned and 
straight thinking scholars, and the baseless, 
reasonless and proofless system of unfaith, a 
product of solely human origin, with a fruit- 
age of widely malign influence upon untrained 
lay minds. 

With fitting comment we cite Dr. Brown's 
own words in defense of the "New Theology" 
and depreciation of the Old: 

Page 1. "By the new theology we mean the 
type of theology whose method is determined 
by the modern scientific movement. By the 
modern scientific movement is meant the move- 
ment of thought whose chief marks on the out- 
ward side are the acceptance of development 
as the law of the physical universe, and on the 
inward side the recognition of the contribution 
of mind to the content of knowledge." 

Page 12. (Repeating page 1.) "By the 
new theology we mean the theology whose 
method is determined by the results of the 
modern scientific movement, both on the ob- 
jective side in the acceptance of develop- 
ment" (evolution) "as the law of the physical 
universe, and on the subjective side by the 
recognition of the contribution which the mind 
itself" (the Autonomous Mind) "makes to the 
content of its own knowledge. It is a theology 



54 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM 

which has come into existence as a result of the 
intellectual revolution through which thought 
has passed during the last century, and it 
expresses the reaction of that revolution within 
the realm of religion." 

Concerning this recent "intellectual revolu- 
tion of thought," also referred to as "the 
modern scientific movement," and here affirmed 
to be the generator of the new theology, we 
submit brief but sufficing comment: 

Every Christian scholar gladly and grate- 
fully recognizes the remarkable intellectual 
quickening that has characterized the past half 
century. Its main producing causes may be 
read in the swift and signal advance in scien- 
tific knowledge and inventive art, leading to 
an immense increase in means and facilities for 
intellectual and industrial intercourse, and ex- 
changes of commercial products between civi- 
lized nations. The crowning results, as re- 
spects religious truth, appear in a clearer, 
keener insight, a profounder search, a wider 
vision, more definite knowledge, and a simpler, 
more direct and effective expression of Divinely 
revealed truths. 

As respects the above cited assertion that 
the New Theology was begotten by the recent 
"intellectual revolution of thought," a little 
rudimentary reasoning will show that the no- 
tion of truth-creating force existing in and 



OF TO-DAY 55 

operative by mere human thought is a fanciful 
chimera. For the human mind is simply a 
fabricating machine. Like all manufacturing 
machines it needs to be supplied with appro- 
priate material upon which to work, and pro- 
duce a definite fabric. As the manufacturing 
machine is incapable of producing the material 
upon which it works, so the human mentality is 
utterly unable to originate and create a single 
conception of either truth or fact. It can 
only be exercised in the consideration of such 
truths and facts as are set before it by an au- 
thentic and authoritative Divine disclosure. 
Furthermore, all enlarged and advanced intel- 
lectual progress is purely subjective, — i. e„ 
proceeds from the mind's own action — and 
it is made possible only by the mind's con- 
tact with objective truth and fact. Here 
is the root error of the above cited asser- 
tion ascribing creative force to "the intel- 
lectual movement of thought." Such move- 
ment cannot exist or be operative except it is 
solidly based upon truth or fact from a Divine 
source Divinely revealed. Much less can it 
masquerade as "scientific," and begetter of a 
Theology, or Science of God. 

Page 1. "The new theology is a matter 
of principles." 

Only two "principles" are indicated thus far : 
1. The acceptance of the Evolutionary The- 



56 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM 

ory, which affirms the existence and actual work- 
ing of a productive life-force in a mere natural 
process of events, without any conceivable 
cause or agent in production. Even Goldwin 
Smith bids "the Evolutionist to remember that 
Evolution cannot have evolved itself." 2. A 
similar acceptance of the Theory of "Au- 
tonomous Mind," i. e., the utterly impossible 
notion that the discerning and determining 
power as to questions of truth and duty is 
natively inherent and fully possessed by the 
mind of every man. Akin to these two asserted 
"principles," a third crops out in the further 
pages. It is the like baseless notion that 
experience is the source and basis and so the 
arbiter and interpreter of the creed or things 
to be believed. The simplest analysis shows 
that the fact is just the reverse. (See p. 9.) 

With visionary "principles" as its substance 
and body, instead of solid, immovable Facts of 
Divine Revelation, it naturally follows that 

Page 1. "The new theology has no formal 
creed in which its beliefs are embodied. It 
is a spirit and a method rather than a body of 
definite opinions." 

If we read these citations together, we have 
a definite creed, although negative in terms, 
vague and visionary in substance, barren as to 
results, and, as certified by the writer's closing 
word, uncertain as to correctness and perma- 



OF TO-DAY 57 

nence. From the acceptance of such a creed 
every sane mind would be instinctively repelled. 



ITS POINTS OF NEGATION AND DENIAL OF 
ESSENTIAL TRUTHS 

Page 9. "Doctrines such as election, re- 
generation, justification, perseverance, assur- 
ance, to many (Christians) in our day have 
lost their meaning and become empty words." 

Page H. (Denial of the Supernatural.) 
"The contrast between nature and the super- 
natural, which was fundamental for the old 
theology, has disappeared. . . . The same 
law which holds the planets in their orbits is 
matched by a corresponding law within. The 
mind has its uniform processes in which cause 
follows effect in irrevocable sequence. It is a 
law of development." 

Page 15. "The Bible . . . can no longer 
be isolated from other books, as was the habit 
of the old theology. Considered as literature, 
the Bible is a book like other books. We can 
trace its origin, follow its history, analyze 
and explain the processes by which its different 
elements were brought into the form in which 
we have them." P. 18. "When we turn to 
our Bible, we do not have to abandon the 
methods which we use when we study Shakes- 
peare or Homer." 



58 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM 

Page 15. "What is true of God's revela- 
tion without, in nature and in the Bible, is true 
also of his activity in the spirit of man. Here 
too the abrupt contrasts of the old theology 
have disappeared from the new. Sin is not a 
foreign intruder making its appearance in the 
universe suddenly at a moment of time, and 
bringing about an abrupt transformation in 
human nature as a whole. Sin is the inevita- 
ble result of certain tendencies inwrought into 
the structure of human nature. It is the sur- 
vival of the animal in man, his failure to rise 
to the higher capacities within him. So, salva- 
tion is not an act wrought once for all in some 
transcendent realm. It is a process going on 
through the ages, and rooted as truly as sin 
itself in the nature of man. Atonement is not 
the great exception, it is the universal law of 
all true living. Calvary is a principle as well 
as an event. . . . So, under other names, 
justification and sanctification are experiences 
found outside of Christianity. The church is 
not composed of exiles from the world, it is 
the first-fruits of the society that is to be. 
Jesus is not God and man, he is God in man, 
the first-born among many brethren, but the 
type to which all mankind is ultimately destined 
to conform." 

(Every Revealed truth is here explicitly or 
implicitly denied, and every sentence, with every 



OF TO-DAY 59 

other citation before and after should be em- 
phatically underscored.) 

Page 16. "God is not thought of as sepa- 
rate from the universe, but rather as its im- 
manent law. He is not a transcendent being 
living in a distant heaven whence from time to 
time he intervenes in the affairs of earth. He 
is an ever-present spirit guiding all that hap- 
pens to a wise and holy end. We meet him in 
nature. We meet him in history. We meet 
him in the Bible. We meet him in the lives of 
great men, and supremely in Jesus, the ideal 
man, through whom he has given us the clear- 
est revelation of his character and purpose. 
He has but one purpose, which animates him 
in all that he does, and that is to make indi- 
viduals like Jesus, and to unite them through 
brotherly service in the ideal society." 

Page 16. "The old theology provided a 
clear-cut, invariable standard, valid everywhere, 
always, and for everybody. The new theology 
knows no such standard. It deals with prin- 
ciples rather than laws, and when conditions 
change, the application of principles has to 
be modified to suit the changing environment. 
Right and wrong are determined for us not so 
much by a standard established in the past as 
by a purpose affecting the future. As Chris- 
tians it is our ultimate aim to establish the 
Kingdom of God on earth, but what particular 



60 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM 

kind of conduct that purpose may involve un- 
der any particular set of circumstances can only 
be determined by a study of the factors of the 
problem as they arise." 

Page 17. "The consciousness of the im- 
mediate presence of God, which was so char- 
acteristic a feature of the older piety, is not so 
prominent in the new. It is not that the be- 
lief in the divine presence is lacking, but it is 
spread over so wide a territory that it is not 
as palpable to the emotions." (An attenuated 
"experience.") 

Page 19. "If the new theology owes its 
origin to curiosity, it finds its verification in 
experience." 

Page 19. "The advocates of the new the- 
ology are called critical, destructive, sceptical, 
pullers-down rather than builders-up, and it 
must be confessed that there is truth in the 
charge. How can it be otherwise? The new 
theology is the outgrowth of a rational (?) 
movement, and thought is necessarily critical, 
destructive, sceptical. The old view of the 
world which served for a thousand years has 
broken down, and countless builders are at 
work on the framework of the new philosophy 
which is to house our enlarged universe." 

Against this distempered conception of the 
rational origin of the new theology, and the 
insensate prophecy of the world's stability and 



OF TO-DAY 61 

progress under the mere movement of unaided 
human thought, we need only the cheering as- 
surance of the clear Word of the Living God: 
"Wherefore, receiving a Kingdom that cannot 
be shaken, let us have grace whereby we may 
offer service well-pleasing to God, with rever- 
ence and awe." 

Page 24. (The closing sentences confess 
the writer's remaining doubt and abiding un- 
certainty.) 

"We have to show that with the intellectual 
resources which the new knowledge puts at our 
disposal we can give to the old convictions a 
surer and more satisfying expression than they 
have ever received before. If the new theology 
can do this, it will last; if not, it will have to 
give place to a newer" 



The writer's personal attitude is worthy of 
note. By definitely classifying himself with 
the "advocates of the new theology," p. 22; 
by his use of the words "we" and "our" in the 
above closing sentence; by deliberately, of his 
own motion, without assigned request or provo- 
cation, assuming the task of exploiting the 
New Theology in disparagement of the Old; 
and by his choice, for making his position 
known, of a magazine that has been and is the 
foremost antagonist of Evangelical orthodoxy, 
Professor Adams virtually announces himself 



62 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM 

as a champion advocate of the modern system 
of Liberal Thought, of which the ultimate 
fruits and fullest expression appears in the 
so-called "New Theology." 

To an intelligent Christian reader the above 
citations are informing and utterly condem- 
natory of the New Theology which they dis- 
close and interpret. It explicitly ignores both 
the natural and moral Supremacy of God, en- 
slaves and chains Him to His own Nature- 
machine. It has no thought or word of a Di- 
vine Redemption of sinful, condemned men. It 
ignores and denies the Divine Sonship and 
Mediatorship of Jesus Christ, — the only men- 
tion of His name being to point a denial of His 
Godhood. The very name of the Holy Spirit 
does not appear, and in its whole fabric it 
implicitly rejects both His Godhood and His 
Redemptive agency in the renewal and sanc- 
tification of the man "justified by faith." And 
as an incontrovertible consequence it obliter- 
ates the Cardinal Fact of inspired Revelation, 
— The Divine Trinity — upon which hangs the 
very Being of God, and depends the sole hope of 
man's restoration to the likeness and engage- 
ment in the eternal fellowship and service of the 
Almighty, Infinitely Perfect and Loving God. 

It is not a Theology, or science of God, since 
it denies His Transcendency, and thrusts Him 



OF TO-DAY 63 

aside from His own Creation and from His 
Moral Rule over the race He has made in His 
own image and whom He will adjudge at "the 
great Day." Without a hint of man's possi- 
ble Divine call to "repentance toward God and 
faith in our Lord Jesus Christ," it rules out 
of the Bible the hope and joy of such ringing 
affirmations, promises and invitations as these: 
"Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away 
the sin of the world!" "God so loved the world 
that He gave His only begotten Son that 
whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, 
but have eternal life." "Christ died for our 
sins, and was raised for our justification." 
"Come unto Me, all that are heavy laden, and I 
will give you rest!" 

In place of these Holy Scriptures, abound- 
ing in "exceeding great and precious promises," 
which include earth and heaven, time and eter- 
nity, and overwhelmingly meet and match man's 
supreme needs for an eternal existence, this 
trivial system of "Modern Thought" presents 
a bare ethical scheme, at most aiming at a 
better ordering of this earthly, ephemeral life. 
With this temporary scheme it subverts and 
empties human life of its vital significance, 
eliminates its high and holy purposes in its only 
abiding relation to its Divine Maker, Ruler, 
and loving Redeemer. In its experiential is- 
sue, it cannot fail to realize the awful vision of 



64* CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM 

Jean Paul, of a world without light, life, or 
hope. 

And this, from his high official place as The- 
ological Instructor, is the final, summary belief 
and teaching of a scholar, greatly gifted, finely 
cultured, and withal, considerate and courteous ; 
of whom to his honor it may be said, "He has 
the courage of his convictions." 

In contrast with these teachings of the 
present Theological Professor, — and elsewhere 
(p. 2) — with those of the incumbent of the 
Presidency of Union, we offer brief extracts 
from the Professor of Theology and from the 
Seminary President of half a century ago, in 
the period of its glory. And we ask the reader 
to linger upon the thought conveyed in these 
paragraphs, — to note its depth of meaning and 
high purpose, and to appreciate the simplicity, 
beauty, tenderness, and strength of its ex- 
pression. 

PROFESSOR HENRY BOYNTON SMITH, D. D. 
THE THEOLOGY FOR OUR TIMES 

"The theology which is preeminently needed 
in our times is that whose substance and man- 
ner have met the needs of men in all times. 
This, in its essential principles, is the old, time- 
honored theology of the Christian Church, with 



OF TO-DAY 65 

its two foci of sin and redemption, all viewed as 
dependent on God. It is based upon the solid 
granite rock (the only true petra) and built up 
of living stones in massive proportions, rising 
ever upward until its aspiring lines fade away 
in the bosom of the infinite, whither it leads us 
that there we may rest. That old theology — 
older than our schools, older than the earth 
and the stars — coeval with the Godhead; al- 
way yet never old, never yet ever new; it is 
dateless and deathless as the Divine decree, 
yet fresh as the dawning light of a new day 
in every new-born soul ; it has been known from 
the beginning to all penitent and believing 
souls ; it is uttered in every humble prayer ; 
it has been sung in such melodious and rap- 
turous strains as have nowhere else found voice. 
Someone has said that it is a theology which 
can never be sung; but it is the only theology 
which has called forth the tenderest and lofti- 
est tones of human feeling; which finds its full 
expression equally in that saddest of human 
music, the woful miserere which recalls the 
sacred, awful passion of our dying Lord, and 
the jubilant and triumphant anthem which 
celebrates His accomplished victory. That old 
theology, the living essence of our sacred Scrip- 
tures, abiding substance of our creed, the sense 
of our confessions, and the consensus of our 
schools, has been held and taught by the most 



66 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM 

piercing and soaring intellects of our Chris- 
tian times — Athanasius and Augustine, An- 
selm and Aquinas, Luther, Melanchthon and 
Calvin, Turretine and Edwards ; and through 
them it has taught and fashioned the most 
vigorous and advancing churches and nations 
of modern time." Bib. Work, viii, 429. 

PRESIDENT WILLIAM ADAMS, D. D. 
THE POST-RESURRECTION QUESTION OF CHRIST 

"Lovest thou me? All down through time, 
the question, in various ways, is presented to 
living souls. The human race is, and will be, 
divided by that one test. It will be uttered 
again from the throne of judgment, that 
throne high and white, before which a disparted 
world shall pass to his right hand and his left. 
That throne will be occupied by the resplendent 
form of incarnate Love, and the destiny of 
every man will be — must be — as are his affini- 
ties in regard to Him. He that loveth is of 
God; and they who are like God shall be gath- 
ered to his bosom." Bible Work, N. T. I., 
p. 576. 

THE OPEN TOMB OF CHRIST 

"Come to the vacant sepulchre of Christ, 
and sing for joy. Death is abolished; let us 
rejoice and be glad. Angels, those spirits of 
purity and love, hasten to meet us here with 



OF TO-DAY 67 

their message of joy. They too are interested 
in the redemption of Christ ; for they sung on 
the night of his advent ; they ministered to the 
sufferer in the garden of agony; they rejoice 
over every sinner that repenteth ; and they bear 
the spirits of the righteous to the bosom of 
God. Heaven and earth, angels and men, meet 
happily together at the open tomb of Christ. 
Sorrow may be for a night; joy cometh in the 
morning. With grateful hearts, with a head 
lifted up, and with a full-toned voice should 
we ever repeat the great articles of our faith: 
6 I believe in Jesus Christ, who was crucified, 
who died, and was buried ; who rose again from 
the dead; and who is now at the right hand of 
God: I believe in the forgiveness of sins, in 
the resurrection of the body, and the life ever- 
lasting.' " Bib. Work, N. T. I., p. 558. 

The ultimate aim and life-purpose of the 
New Theologians and the Future Religionists 
are summed up in an absolute independence of 
God's supremacy, and a present passing life 
abounding in gainfulness and creature comfort. 
They do indeed present definite features which 
to a limited extent are just and true. The 
grounds, valid as far as rightly applied, upon 
which they rest their appeal for a wide and 
general following, consist in the humanities of 
neighbor help to the poor, the ignorant, the 



68 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM 

wretched, and the depraved, and in the pro- 
prieties, refinements and culture of social inter- 
course. But they owe to the widespread teach- 
ings of a Bible Christianity alone all their 
humanizing and elevating influences and ef- 
fects. And in the very use of these influences 
they are prompted solely by the ultimate mo- 
tive of self-pleasing, through the inwardly im- 
pelling demands of natural sympathy, senti- 
ment or taste, or instinctive generous desire to 
remove unjust, lawless, and repulsive social 
conditions. While these natural sympathies 
and generous instincts, and innate demands for 
social order, decency and dignity evince a su- 
perior character and place the individual upon 
a comparatively high level, they fail to reach 
the higher standard of true philanthropy. 
This is defined and fully expressed in the Sec- 
ond Commandment: "Thou shalt love thy 
neighbor as thyself." And this Second can 
only be fulfilled under the impelling force of 
obedience to the First and "Great" Command- 
ment of Supreme and all-mastering Love to 
God — heart obedience by the renewed believer 
whose life-constraining motive is the infinite, 
everlasting love of the God-man Christ Jesus. 

Upon this illumining testimony it would 
seem that the New Theology may be substan- 
tially summed up in the denial of every state- 



OF TO-DAY 69 

ment that distinguishes Christ from the ordi- 
nary man; in the flouting of His Redemptive 
Office-Work as the God-Man, His Resurrec- 
tion and Eternal Enthronement; in the rejec- 
tion of the Deity of the Holy Spirit ; of His re- 
creating agency in the spirit of man, and the 
elimination of His inspiring influence from the 
writers of the Bible, thus reducing it to the 
level of human production. Not only does it 
ignore and scorn God and His Word, but as 
subsidiary points that appeal to every man's 
deepest life-experience the system has no word 
or thought in the recognition of human sor- 
row or human sin. It makes no mention of 
life-burdening human guilt, "that perilous stuff 
which weighs upon the heart." It only thinks 
and writes of progress in personal and social 
amenities, forgetting that such progress is not 
advance, since advance is only possible when 
the motive-ideal of the life is perfect holiness. 

As abundantly evidenced in these pages Lib- 
eral writers wilfully ignore the laws of thought, 
the premises of logic with all demands of dia- 
lectic, and the canons of reasoning and criti- 
cism. In their ambition to stand in the lime- 
light they prefer the mental excitement of so- 
phistical hypotheses, and incredible assump- 
tions. For support or defense of their posi- 
tions they present neither reasoning nor proof. 



70 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM 

Their sole, shadowy plea of ground and motive 
for their bold negations of God's truth is found 
in a proud boast of 

INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM 

True- liberty has its base and finds its pure 
wing of gladness in unwavering loyalty, or 
whole-hearted obedience to the Law of life, 
material or spiritual. And every intelligent, 
reasonable, and clear thinker knows that genu- 
ine freedom, wise and just liberty, in every rela- 
tion among men — in citizenship, and in business 
and social organizations — is limited and con- 
trolled by appropriate authoritative laws 
through which orderly and progressive results 
are obtained. Lawless license is the antonym 
of true liberty. Unhappily, in the domain of 
thought as expressed in literature, the present 
age is largely dominated by lawless laxity mas- 
querading in the name of liberty. Speaking 
of "the great, free, progressive, modem intel- 
lect," Chesterton says : "Our age has been 
superficially chattering about change and free- 
dom." 

Religious liberty, or freedom in the holding 
and expression of religious truth, is of neces- 
sity bounded by and finds its very freedom and 
life in obedience to the law of God. The 
Psalmist said: "I shall observe thy laws con- 
tinually: and I shall walk in liberty." Paul 



OF TO-DAY 71 

affirms : "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there 
is liberty." James calls it "the perfect law, 
the law of liberty." And the Master sums up 
in His plain declaration: "The truth shall 
make you free" ; "If the Son shall make you 
free, ye shall be free indeed." 

It would seem, then, that the claim of in- 
tellectual freedom by Liberal writers when set 
against their system of negations and their 
unfaith toward God and His Word, means de- 
termined and unrestricted license, and extin- 
guishes all rightful law and authority in the 
universe of God. 

In fine, Liberalism is condemned by all 
sane thinking for its utter lack of sound rea- 
soning and appropriate evidence. It is dis- 
proved and rejected by the logical outcome of 
its basal Evolutionary Philosophy: — in its de- 
nial of Supernaturalism ; in its claim of deter- 
mining and interpreting Scripture truths by 
every man's own consciousness and inclination; 
in its destructive Criticism of the historic facts 
and spiritual teachings of the Bible; and in the 
system of thought and unfaith embodied in the 
New Theology. 

At its weakest it doubts and questions, at its 
boldest it defiantly denies, the Deity of Christ 
and of the Holy Spirit, and so obliterates the 
crowning fact of inspired Revelation, the Trin- 



72 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM 

ity of the Godhead. It leaves the race of sin- 
ful men without an intervening God, under the 
ban of self-condemnation, helpless, hopeless, 
despairing, in the face of an eternal existence. 
For the deepest penitence it presents no merci- 
ful, forgiving Sovereign and Father; for the 
yearning after sympathetic fellowship with and 
joyful abiding service to a loving and com- 
muning God, the sensitive, responsive, undying 
spirit is forever barred out. 



FAILURE OF LIBERAL THEOLOGY IN GERMANY 

Rev. Dr. Rittelmeyer, of Nuremberg, a pro- 
nounced liberal, in the Christliche Welt, a lib- 
eral organ, makes this open confession: 

"All the public discussions and populariza- 
tion of modern critical views have not found 
any echo or sympathy among the ranks of the 
laboring people, and there are whole classes 
of society among the educated who are an- 
tagonistic to liberal tendencies in religion. 
Among these are the officers in the army and 
the navy, practitioners of the technical arts 
and of engineering, and almost to a man the 
whole world of business. It is foolish to close 
our eyes to these facts." 

He makes this frank admission and confes- 
sion: 

"One trouble is that modern theology has 



OF TO-DAY 73 

entirely grown out of criticism. Its weakness 
is intellectualism ; it is a negative movement. 
We can understand the cry of the orthodox, 
that advanced theology is eliminating one thing 
after the other from our religious thought, and 
then asks, What is left? True, we answer, 
God is left. But is it not the case that the 
modern God-Father faith is generally a very 
weak and attenuated faith in a Providence and 
nothing more? And on this subject too we 
quarrel among ourselves, whether a God-Father 
troubles himself about little things only or 
about great things too, such as the forgiveness 
of sins. We do the same thing with Jesus. 
We speak of him as of a unique personality, as 
the highest revelation of the Father, and the 
like, but always connected with a certain skep- 
tical undercurrent of thought; but we do not 
appreciate him in his deepest soul and in the 
great motives of his life. He is not for mod- 
ern theology what he is for orthodoxy, the 
Saviour of the world and the Redeemer of man- 
kind." 

A CLEARER, FULLER, PROFOTTNDER TESTIMONY 

Dr. Wilhelm von Schneten in a work entitled 
"The Modern Jesus Cult," himself a pro- 
nounced radical of the modern school in Ger- 
many, affirms that the modern picture of Jesus 
is a false deduction from its premises. We cite 



74* CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM 

his words from the "Literary Digest" transla- 
tion: 

"The modern Jesus cult is a romantic rev- 
erence for the 'human' or the 'historical' Jesus, 
the way for which was prepared by Herder, 
and was put into distinct theological formulas 
by Schleiermacher, was then fully developed by 
Ritschl, and in recent years, in hundreds of 
variant forms, has become popular through 
thousands of publications, by the lectures of 
'critical' theologians and the preaching of 
'liberal' pulpits. In fact the Jesus problem 
has become the great religious question of the 
day, around which all other religious convic- 
tions and life in modern times seem to circle. 
It is on this recognition of Jesus as their Mas- 
ter that liberal theologians base their claim 
that what they teach is 'Christianity.' When 
they appeal to the authority of Jesus they 
think they can prove the purity and greatness 
of any doctrine. They insist that by search- 
ing for the 'original sense' of the teachings of 
Jesus they can serve the religious needs of the 
present day best. In every sphere of discus- 
sion, including the practical problems of so- 
ciology, an appeal is made to Jesus. The dan- 
gerous tendencies of Social Democracy are to 
be overcome by leading the people back to the 
primitive moral teachings of the 'historical' 
Christ. In the praise of the Master's virtues 



OF TO-DAY 75 

as a man the skeptical scholar of scientific re- 
search thinks he has found a real Christianity. 
Jesus is 'the purest, the greatest of all human 
personalities' ; 'he alone gives to life a real pur- 
pose and aim'; 'he is the ideal of the human 
race,' 'the ideal perfect man, the example for 
human conduct and life;' 'one in whose free 
and sacred person we find a recompense for all 
that which we otherwise have lost.' In one 
word, the entire religion of the modern man, 
as Naumann expressly declares, is a cult or 
worship of the ideal human being Jesus, 'the 
religious and ethical model.' The veneration 
for his human personality, faith in the 'eter- 
nal' significance of his words, and pious imita- 
tion of his love for others is represented to 
be 'the essence of Christianity,' the one and 
only thing that constitutes true religion." 

In direct denial of the claim of the modern 
Jesus cult of liberal theology to be called 
"Christian" Dr. von Schneten continues : 

"It must not be forgotten that Christianity 
is, as the name implies, not faith in Jesus, but 
faith in Christ, and faith in Jesus only in so 
far as Jesus is regarded, as Christ is, as the 
Redeemer and the son of God ; moreover, a 'son 
of God' and a 'Redeemer' in the real historical 
sense of the term, and not in a modernized em- 
phasizing of these expressions into general and 
meaningless terms. In a word, Christianity 



76 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM 

is a Christ-religion, is faith in redemption 
solely and alone through the true son of God, 
Jesus Christ. Whether this faith is one that 
now is out of date or not, whether it be a true 
or a false faith, everybody must decide for him- 
self; but that in him, and in him alone, the 
'essence of true Christianity' is to be found 
can not be doubted for a moment. Not Jesus 
the man, not the revered preacher and teacher 
of morals, who sealed his convictions, as is 
claimed, by his death, is the person who has 
conquered the hearts of mankind and overcome 
the decaying civilization of the old Greco- 
Roman world and brought to his feet the bar- 
baric hordes of Europe; but he who accom- 
plished this was the Christ, who suffered, who 
died as the divine Saviour on the cross, which 
thereby has become the grand symbol of the 
sacrifice of a God for the welfare of man. It 
is this faith in the divine redemption that has 
been reechoed in the hymns and prayers of 
Christianity and that has revolutionized the 
world. The joys of Christmas, of Easter, the 
majestic hopes of the martyrs, the sublime faith 
of true Christianity can be explained only on 
this ground, but never on the basis of a 'his- 
torical' Christ, a great moral teacher or a 
model moralist. And to the present day it is 
this faith that upholds and develops the church 
and makes Christianity the greatest power in 



OF TO-DAY 77 

the thoughts and lives of men and of nations. 
Even the non-Christian philosophy, that does 
not agree with the church's conception of 
Christ, must recognize historically and in the 
present life of the church the Christ as the 
son of God as the center and heart of Chris- 
tianity in its world mission and work. A 
philosophy can not change facts. 

"Of this great central thought and power 
the modern conceptions of Jesus as the 'great 
man' deprives the gospel; and, what is more, 
is directly contrary to what the gospels intend 
to teach, and do teach when taken in the sense 
of their promulgators. The Jesus of the gos- 
pels, even of the Synoptics, is not a mere man, 
not even the best of men, but on the whole the 
Christ of the traditional teachings of the church. 
In this respect there is no substantial difference 
between John and the other three gospels ; and 
it is incorrect to reconstruct a kind of a hu- 
man 'historical' Christ out of the Synoptics. 
This can be done only by doing violence, e. g., 
to the narratives of Matthew and Luke con- 
cerning the virgin birth of Jesus. We may not 
believe these things, but the gospels certainly 
want to teach them, and the elimination of these 
elements by liberal theology does violence to 
the sources for the life of Jesus. 

"Even Professor Bousset, the author of 
'Jesus,' declares that the oldest of our gospel 



78 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM 

records, that of Mark, already depicts Jesus 
not only as the Messiah of the Jewish people, 
but also as the eternal son of God. 

"In view of these facts it must be maintained 
that the modern Jesus cult of liberal theology 
is practically an empty thing and little more 
than a mountain of words, but of no religious 
value, and can not even claim to be 'Chris- 
tian.' " 



IV 



THE GODHEAD AN ETERNAL TRIN- 
ITY; THREE-FOLD OFFICE-WORK IN 
MAN'S REDEMPTION 

1. GOD TRIUNE 

According to His own assertion there is One, 
and only One, God; but, as disclosed in His 
own Self Revelation, there are Three Distinc- 
tions in the Godhead, revealed most clearly and 
fully in the New Testament, under the names 
of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. To these 
Three we apply the term Persons as the best 
that human language affords. But the fact 
of an inseparable unity must always be borne 
in mind. We add the illumining words of 
Bishop Huntington: "In the transcendent, re- 
moved, and awful depth of His absolute infini- 
tude, which no understanding can pierce, the 
Everlasting and Almighty God lives in an ex- 
istence of which our only possible knowledge is 
gained by lights thrown back from Revelation. 
Out of that ineffable and veiled Godhead there 
emerge to us in Revelation the three whom we 
call Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit; 
79 



80 THE GODHEAD 

with their several individual offices, mutual re- 
lations, operations toward men, and perfect 
unity together. Holding fast the prime and 
positive fact of this unity, we have given us, as 
an equal matter of faith, the threeness. We 
know of no priority to that threeness; of no 
epoch when it was not; of no Deity independ- 
ent of that threefold distinction. No hint is 
given that there is any difference of nature, 
dignity, duration, power, or glory between 
them. Each of them is referred to in the 
Scriptures as God. Each of them is distin- 
guished from the others by the personal pro- 
nouns. To each of them Divine attributes and 
acts are ascribed, and to each Divine worship 
is offered." 

2. RELATION OF THE THREE PERSONS 

"In the language of the old theologians, the 
Father is the original Fountain-Head of the 
Godhead; therefore in Scripture is frequently 
called God absolutely. The Son is spoken of 
as 'begotten' ; this with the view, first, of dis- 
tinguishing the mode of His origin from 'cre- 
ation' (the Son Himself is the Creator of all) ; 
and next, of indicating that He is of the Fath- 
er's own substance — 'very God of very God.' 
And the Spirit is described as 'proceeding' 
from the Father and the Son (Jn. xv, 26) 
'breathed forth' as the name indicates. — The 



AN ETERNAL TRINITY 81 

doctrine of the Trinity is obtained by observ- 
ing and collating what is declared in Scripture, 
and discerned in the process of human salva- 
tion, regarding these Divine Persons." — Prof. 
James Orr. 

S. THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD 

"The Fatherhood of God in the New Testa- 
ment is never revealed as a thing by itself; it 
is revealed always in relation with the Son and 
the Spirit. . . . The Fatherhood of God, 
in the full Christian idea of it, does not origi- 
nate with God's relation to the world or to 
man; or even with God's relation to believers. 
If you wish to find the ultimate spring of 
Fatherhood in the heart of God, you must seek 
it, not in relation to humanity or to believers, 
but in the relation to the Eternal and 'only be- 
gotten' Son. It is with this Fatherly love, of 
which the primal object is the Son, that God 
turns to the world, and seeks to draw men in 
to be sharers of it." — Prof. Orr. 

4. man's sonship (childship) to god 

"When God created man it was to a destiny 
of Sonship. But man by sin turned his back 
on that destiny. He took another spirit into 
his heart; passed into another relation to God 
than that of a Son to a Father. If this des- 
tiny of sonship was to be realized, it could no 



82 THE GODHEAD 

longer be on the basis of Creation, but only on 
the basis of Redemption. Hence the restric- 
tion of sonship in the Gospel to those who are 
actually partakers of the grace of Christ's sal- 
vation. Sonship, in grace, becomes ours by 
regeneration and a Divine act of Adoption." 
—Prof, Orr. 

5. FORCEFUL APPEAL OF THE THREE DIVINE 
PERSONS 

The complete Self-Revelation of God in- 
cludes, on one side, all elemental and spiritual 
attributes as equally possessed and alike ex- 
ercised by each Person of the Triune Godhead. 
On the other side, in its disclosure of the Di- 
vine Working in Redemption the Revelation 
discriminates peculiar relations and acts em- 
bodied in the definite Office-Work of each Divine 
Person. 

Both sides of the Godhead as thus revealed 
— the infinite wisdom, might, holiness and love 
manifest and exercised in common, and all spe- 
cial relations and acts of the Three in the 
achievement of man's Redemption — combine to 
exert a mighty force of appeal to arouse the 
attention, attract the confidence, and win the 
responsive love and reverent thankful obedience 
of the sensitive human spirit. Then will fol- 
low submission and penitence, filial trust and 
loyal consecration to service. And this won- 



AN ETERNAL TRINITY 83 

der-work of grace on the part of the interven- 
ing God is the supreme motive power that con- 
strains the self-serving man to bow beneath the 
Cross of the Self-sacrificing Son of God. 

6. INTERCOMMUNION LIFE OF THE TRINITY 

As an eminent part of a full interpretation 
of the Divine Trinity there stands forth a fact 
of the highest moment and most intense per- 
sonal interest and relief to the fervent seeker 
after God : There is and ever has been Fellow- 
ship in the Life of the Godhead, a social Inter- 
communion between the Three Divine Persons ; 
and this perfectly harmonious Fellowship ex- 
ists without break or change from everlasting 
to everlasting. "This is My beloved Son," 
said the Father, "in whom I am well pleased." 
"Thou lovedst me," responds the Son, "before 
the foundation of the world." "Glorify Thou 
Me with the glory I had with Thee before the 
world was !" And to the Pharisees He said, 
"I am not alone, but I and the Father who 
sent me." 

"Only through the Trinitarian distinction," 
writes Prof. Orr, "are we brought into com- 
munion with a Being who has within Himself a 
life of communion. R. H. Hutton says, 'If 
Christ is the Eternal Son of God, God is in 
deed and in essence a Father ; the social nature, 
the spring of love, is of the very essence of the 



84 THE GODHEAD 

Eternal Being: the communication of His life, 
the reciprocation of His affection dates beyond 
time — belongs, in other words, to the very 
Being of God.' " 

For unknown ages, we may believe, this Life 
of Fellowship in the Divine Trinity has been a 
glorious and conscious reality and source of 
sympathetic joy to the multitude, of angelic 
intelligences who "kept their first estate." 
And assuredly this intercommunion of life and 
love between the essentially united Persons of 
the Godhead must deeply affect and add im- 
measurably to the blessedness of the vaster 
hosts of redeemed and purified human spirits — 
who forever dwell in the presence, enjoy the 
fellowship, and engage in the service of the Al- 
mighty and changelessly loving God — since it 
brings into that holy and harmonious life of 
Creator and creature the presence and activ- 
ity of the whole Deity, the Father and the Holy 
Spirit in vital conjunction and ceaseless coop- 
eration with the visibly enthroned Son of God 
and Man, "the King in His beauty." 

Alike impressive, inspiring, and sustaining 
to the living believer's thought of God is the 
fact that, instead of a single companionless 
Being existing eternally alone without possi- 
bility of exercising sympathy, love, and fel- 
lowship which in an infinite measure must be 
possessed by an Infinite Spirit, there is dis- 



AN ETERNAL TRINITY 85 

closed to us a Triune Godhead which compasses 
and includes an Intercommunion Life between 
the Father, the Son, and the Spirit eternally 
existing. Here, indeed, is a great and precious 
truth for present consideration; a sublime far 
reaching fact that demands and rewards our 
deepest thought and realization. For it re- 
veals the Counsels of the Triune Godhead 
planning and achieving the history and des- 
tiny of the race to be created, and leads us 
naturally to the apprehension and personal 
glad acceptance of the Office-Work of each 
Divine Person in the Redemption of the new 
but fallen creature. 

7. ATTITUDE IN PRAYER TOWARD THE THREE 
DIVINE PERSONS 

This is definitely stated by Paul (Eph. 
ii, 18) : "For through Him (Christ) we have 
our access in one Spirit unto the Father." 
Christ's Name and Mediation provide the basis 
of our approach, and the Holy Spirit is our 
efficient Inspirer and Helper in thought, feel- 
ing, and expression. Christ reveals the Father, 
and through His Self-Offering becomes our as- 
sured Advocate and Intercessor. The Holy 
Spirit reveals Christ in His mediating and sav- 
ing offices, shows all our needs supplied by 
Him, and so illumines, inspires, and aids our 
utterance in prayer. Thus in intelligent, 



86 THE GODHEAD 

heartfelt, and acceptable prayer, we listen for 
the voice, heed the prompting, and welcome the 
influence of the Spirit, we plead the name and 
mediatorial work of Christ, and we ask the 
Father. 

Yet are we privileged to address our prayer 
alike to the Father, to the Lord Jesus Christ, 
and to the Holy Spirit, according to the nat- 
ural play of thought and feeling respecting 
the things desired, and the special relation of 
the Persons to the particular objects of our 
aspiration or need. But even in such specific 
forms of address no thought of severance be- 
tween the Three Persons may be allowed. For 
the prayer addressed to each is equally heard 
and the response of blessing equally accorded 
by the Three in their absolute harmony and 
inseparable unity of Being and Action. 

8. SCRIPTURAL TESTIMONY TO THE TRINITY 

Old Testament intimations of plurality in the 
Godhead are distinctly read in the plural name 
of God and the connected idea of converse, 
Gen. i, £6, and elsewhere; in the Theophanies 
to individual patriarchs and leaders ; in the 
Trine "Holy" of Isa. vi, and in many Psalms. 

As for the New Testament, almost innumer- 
able expressions in the Gospels, Acts, Epistles 
and Revelation plainly distinguish and dis- 
criminate each of the Persons of the Godhead, 



AN ETERNAL TRINITY 87 

noting a peculiar relation subsisting between 
them and a special office and mission of each 
in carrying out the Eternal Purpose and Plan 
of man's Redemption. The distinction between 
the Father and the Son is vitally woven into 
almost every utterance of Christ and into every 
chapter of the Epistles of Paul, Peter, and 
John, and it underlies every doctrinal truth 
contained in those Epistles. The Three Per- 
sons are explicitly mentioned, Gal. iv, 6; Eph. 
ii, 18 ; I Pet. i, % ; and elsewhere. 

9. THREE-FOLD OFFICE-WORK IN MAN'S RE- 
DEMPTION 

First Announced by Christ to Nicodemus, 
John iii: Dr. Wm. Hanna writes: "Standing 
in time the first, this discourse stands in char- 
acter alone. You search in vain through all 
the subsequent discourses of our Lord for any 
such clear, compendious, comprehensive develop- 
ment of the Christian salvation ; of its source in 
the love of the Father; of its channel in the 
death of His only begotten Son; and of the 
great Agent, the Holy Spirit, by whom it is 
appropriated and applied. You search in vain 
for any instance in which the Three Persons of 
the Trinity were spoken of by our Lord con- 
secutively and conjointly; to each being as- 
signed His proper part in the economy of our 
Redemption." 



88 THE GODHEAD 

The Formula of Baptism. "In the name of 
the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
Spirit." Dr. J. J. Owen writes: "Literally 
into the name. It is a profession of subjec- 
tion, in a new and special sense, to the Father, 
Son, and Holy Spirit; a profession of being 
God's peculiar property, and of entire devo- 
tion to His service. The use of the word name 
in the singular emphatically expresses the 
unity of the Godhead, as the words Father, 
Son and Holy Spirit, denote the tri-personality. 
The names Father, Son and Holy Spirit refer 
to the Offices which the Sacred Three sustain in 
the work of man's Redemption; and in which 
Offices the only revelation of the Trinity which 
we have is made: One Person, in consequence of 
official superiority, is called Father; the Person 
who stooped to the condition of inferiority is 
correlatively styled Son; while the other Person 
of the Trinity, from His office as Regenerator 
and Sanctifier by His communicated influence, is 
called Spirit. These are the relations brought 
to view in the Word of God. In no instance is 
the term Son applied to the second Person in 
the Trinity except in His office-work of Medi- 
ator and King. And baptism into the covenant 
of grace is here designated baptism into the 
name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, i. e., 
into the duties and privileges of that covenant 
of Redemption, which was founded on the pro- 



AN ETERNAL TRINITY 89 

visions of grace, denoted by these official names 
of the Persons of the Trinity. Beyond this we 
cannot go. The mode of the Divine Existence 
we cannot fathom." 

The Apostolic Benediction. " 'The grace of 
the Lord Jesus Christ ' is the beginning 
and foundation of Christian experience. Only 
through the grace of the Son men come to the 
full experience of the Father's compassion. 
Therefor 'the love of God 9 is mentioned in 
the second place. The name of Father is si- 
lently understood, and in the most absolute 
sense the name of God is given inclusively to 
the Father, because in the Divinity of the 
Father that of the Son and of the Spirit has 
its immovable basis. Only after men have per- 
sonally experienced the grace of the Lord Jesus, 
can they be certain of the love of God. We 
continue in the permanent possession of both 
only in the fellowship or * communion of the 
Holy Spirit, 9 which forms the crown and cope- 
stone of the apostolic blessing. Only through 
the Son do we become children of the Father, 
and temples of the Holy Spirit. Only through 
the Holy Spirit do we become partakers of the 
grace of the Son and the love of the Father." 
— Van Oosterzee. 

"The truth of God's nature, as one God in 
Trinity, becomes better understood and de- 
lighted in as ministering a solid foundation of 



90 THE GODHEAD 

trust to a sinful man. As far as the believer 
can see, the very possibility of salvation rests 
on this distinction of Persons in the one blessed 
God; so that the Father could give His only 
begotten Son, the Son could offer Himself with- 
out spot to God, and the Spirit of the Father 
and the Son could go forth to apply this sal- 
vation by testifying of Jesus, quickening the 
believer's soul 'together with Christ, and fitting 
him for the service and enjoyment of God.' " 
— Goode. 

"To those who have gone most deeply into 
this subject, the Trinity, so far from being a 
bare speculative doctrine, is one of the utmost 
practical value in our Christian thinking. If 
anyone once comes to realize what is involved 
in it, he will never part with it, or be able to 
feel that he has the right conception of God 
without it." — Prof. Orr. 

"We can wish the reader nothing more 
beatific in this life than to have found and fully 
brought into feeling the practical significance 
of this Eternal act or fact of God, which we 
call the Christian Trinity. Nowhere else do 
the bonds of limitation burst away as here. 
Nowhere else does the soul launch upon im- 
mensity as here ; nowhere fill her burning censer 
with the eternal fires of God, as when she sings : 

" One inexplicably three, 
One in simplest unity. 



AN ETERNAL TRINITY 91 

Who that has been able, in some frame of holy 
longing after God, to commit his soul up freely 
to the inspiring impulse of this Divine mystery 
as it is celebrated in some grand doxology of 
Christian worship, and has so been lifted into 
conscious fellowship with the great celestial 
minds, in their higher ranges of beatitude and 
their shining tiers of glory, has not known it 
as being at once the deepest, highest, widest, 
most enkindling, and most practical of all prac- 
tical truth?" — Bushnell. 



THE PLACE AND WORK OF JESUS 
CHRIST: SCRIPTURALLY IDENTI- 
FIED WITH JEHOVAH; IN BOTH 
TESTAMENTS THE IMMEDIATE RE- 
VEALER AND ACTOR FOR THE GOD- 
HEAD 

IDENTIFIED WITH THE OLD TESTAMENT JEHOVAH 

The name "Jehovah" explicitly affirms God's 
Eternal Being, and expresses His covenant re- 
lation with His people as their Redeemer. "His 
essential name," says Delitzsch, "is Jehovah, 
and consists in this, that He is the God of sal- 
vation who in the might of free grace pervades 
and overrules all history. This name is for 
His people a fountain of exultation." 

[The earlier scholars interpreted the He- 
brew word Jehovah as asserting an Eternal and 
Changeless Being. Impliedly accepting this, 
recent investigators affirm the added meaning 
of Infinite Power in Supreme Control of all 
creatures and events. They express this vital 
meaning in the prase : "He shall cause it to be," 
or "He shall cause it to come to pass." The 
92 



OF JESUS CHRIST 93 

eminent scholar, John Urquhart, presents this 
interpretation with great fullness and force, and 
sustains it by many convincing reasons. — The 
Biblical Guide, vol. iv, pp. 98-101.'] 

1. EVIDENTIAL POINTS FROM NEW TESTAMENT 
USE OF OLD TESTAMENT STATEMENTS 

(1) Compare Isa. vi, 3, with John xii, 41. 
Isaiah sees the glory of Jehovah ; John affirms 
that it was the glory of Christ. 

(2) John xix, 37, declares that the word of 
Jehovah spoken by Zechariah xii, 10, "They 
shall look upon Me whom they have pierced," 
was fulfilled in the piercing of the side of 
Christ. 

(3) Hebrews i, 10-12, citing Ps. cii, 25-27, 
"assumes that this passage ascribes Creator- 
ship to the Son of God. This obviously im- 
plies that God as revealed to His people under 
the name Jehovah, the great 'I am,' was really 
the Eternal Son" (Cowles). 

(4) Moses declares that Jehovah led Israel 
through the wilderness. In I Cor. i, 4, 9, Paul 
affirms this of Christ. And Stephen (Acts vii, 
38) declares that Christ was with His "Church 
in the wilderness." 

(5) "The Psalmist, lxxviii, 17, affirms, 'They 
tempted and rebelled against the Most High 
God.' With reference to the same events Paul 
writes, I Cor. x, 9, 'Neither let us tempt 



94 THE PLACE AND WORK 

Christ, as some of them also tempted Him. 
Therefore Christ is the Most High God"' 
(Jones of Nayland). 

% EVIDENCES FROM TITLES APPLIED TO CHRIST 

(1) Messiah, meaning Anointed, referred to, 
Ps. ii, 2, and Dan. ix, 25, has Christos as its 
Greek equivalent. Both refer to the long prom- 
ised Divine Redeemer, denoting His Prophetic 
office, Kingly authority, and Mediatorial char- 
acter. Christ distinctly claimed to be the Mes- 
siah, Son of God, John iv, 26, Mat. xvi, 16, 17, 
and xxvi, 63, 64. 

(2) Furthermore, the expression "Son of 
of Man," which Christ appropriated to Him- 
self, is taken from Daniel third and seventh 
chapters. Of this expression Meyer says : "Its 
simple meaning is, The Messiah, Christ, inas- 
much as in Him the Messiah was come, was, in 
the realization, that Son of Man whose form 
was seen in Daniel's vision." 

(3) In the histories of Abraham, Jacob, 
and some of the Judges we read of God as 
manifested in the form of man. In many in- 
terviews He is referred to as "the Angel of Je- 
hovah." In some, as with Moses at the bush, 
He explicitly identifies Himself with Jehovah. 
Those to whom He makes His presence known 
recognize and offer worship to Him as God. 
And the Biblical writers unreservedly call Him 



OF JESUS CHRIST 95 

Jehovah. "The peculiarity of the angel is that, 
while distinguishing Himself from Jehovah, He 
is yet, in some mysterious way, identified with 
Jehovah, speaks in His name, nay, is declared 
to be Jehovah Himself."— Prof. Orr. "Now," 
writes Dr. Barry, "since 'no man hath seen God' 
(the Father) 'at any time,' and 'the only be- 
gotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father 
hath revealed Him,' the 'Angel of the Lord' in 
such passages must be He who is from the be- 
ginning the 'Word,' i. e., the Manifester or 
Revealer of God, and those appearances must 
be 'foreshadowings of the Incarnation.' " 

We add Gerlaeh's clear and compact sum- 
mary on this point: 

"Throughout the Old Testament there runs 
the distinction between the hidden God and the 
Revealer of God, Himself equal with God, who 
most frequently is called 'the Messenger, the 
Angel of the Lord,' 'Malachi-Jehovah,' — one 
with Him, and yet distinct from Him. This 
Messenger of the Lord is the Guide of the patri- 
archs ; the Caller of Moses ; the Leader of the 
people through the wilderness ; the Champion 
of the Israelites in Canaan ; and also, yet fur- 
ther, the Guide and Ruler of the people of the 
covenant; or, as He is called (Isa. lxiii, 9), 
'the Angel of His Presence' ; by Malachi, as the 
Messenger of the Covenant. This Angel of 
the Lord often in the Old Testament speaks as 



96 THE PLACE AND WORK 

Jehovah, and His appearing is regarded as 
that of the Most High God Himself. Nay, 
God says expressly of this Angel, 'My name — 
i. e., My revealed Being — is in Him.' In the 
New Testament the expressions, 'The Word,' 
'Son,' 'Express Image,' 'Brightness,' betoken 
the same, viz., the countenance turned to man, 
the Revealer of the invisible God. The future 
appearance on earth of the God-man is gradu- 
ally prepared for in the Old Testament in two 
ways : on the one hand, there is promised a 
mighty and glorious human Ruler over all (in 
later times called 'Messiah' — the Anointed of 
the Lord), to whom at the same time in His 
human nature, Divine names, attributes and 
works are ascribed ; on the other hand, the per- 
sonal distinction in the Godhead, the Revealer 
of the invisible God as a separate person, is 
more and more clearly made known." 

3. EVIDENTIAL POINTS FROM THE DISCLOSURES 
OF CHRIST 

(1) In exact correspondence with these mani- 
fold Old Testament manifestations of the "An- 
gel of Jehovah," distinct from yet one with 
Him, is the disclosure of Christ in the Gospel 
and Epistles of John. The discourses and ex- 
tended colloquies of the Gospel to the end of 
Chapter 17 are studded with explicit affirma- 



OF JESUS CHRIST 97 

tions of His distinction from the Father yet 
perfect equality and oneness with Him in na- 
ture, in power, and in working, and of His ex- 
clusive office work as the Revealer of all truth 
respecting the Father and the Holy Spirit, each 
one of which stands forth as proof of His Je- 
hovahship. 

(2) Indirectly but distinctly, by word and 
act, Christ claims the place and work of Je- 
hovah. Echoing the O. T. demand "Trust ye 
in Jehovah forever," He demands "Believe upon 
me." "With calm, simple, profound dignity," 
writes Maclaren, "He lays His hand upon all 
consecrated words, upon all the ancient and hal- 
lowed emotions that are centered in the unseen 
God between the Cherubim, throned above judg- 
ment and resting upon mercy ; and He says, 
'They are all Mine ! That ancient trust I 
claim the right to hold. I am He upon whom 
in all time the loving hearts of them that love 
God are set. I am the Angel of the Covenant 
to whom whosoever trusteth shall never be con- 
founded.' " 

(3) "The word Lord, equivalent to the Je- 
hovah of the Old Testament, and correspond- 
ent to it in the Septuagint version, is constantly 
applied to Christ in the Acts, where it is found 
nearly a hundred times, and is like a sacred 
key-note of the whole, ever sounding for His 
divine Lordship in the ear of the world. It is 



98 THE PLACE AND WORK 

'the Lord Jesus' who is said by Peter to have 
come in and gone out among them. It is He 
who chooses Matthias ; He who sends the Holy 
Ghost; He who adds believers daily to the 
Church; He who works miracles by the hands 
of His apostles. To the Lord Jesus, Stephen, 
the first martyr, looks up and prays at the hour 
of death. It is He who calls to the persecuting 
Saul from heaven." — Bp. Wordsworth. 

"The Lord of Glory," an able work of Pro- 
fessor Warfield, of Princeton Theological Semi- 
nary, is devoted to the exhaustive presentation 
of this New Testament usage. 

CHRIST THE REVEALER OF ALL TRUTH 

At the close of His ministry when announcing 
the coming of the Holy Spirit in the fullness 
of His manifestation and power, Christ dis- 
tinctly claimed to be the source of all spiritual 
truth, while He as distinctly disclosed the office- 
work of the Spirit in the complete unfolding 
and expression of that truth by inspired reve- 
lation to the New Testament writers. His 
words on this point are clear and plain: 

"The Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send 
in My name, shall teach you all things and 
bring to your remembrance all that I have said 
unto you. He shall guide you into all the 
truth : for He shall not speak from himself ; but 



OF JESUS CHRIST 99 

what things soever He shall hear, these shall 
He speak. He shall glorify me, for He shall 
take of mine and declare it unto you." 

And in His prayer: "I have given unto them 
the words that Thou gavest me." Hence Ber- 
nard says : "The teaching of the Lord includes 
the substance of all Christian doctrine. It 
would be easy to show that the intimation of 
every truth revealed to the apostles by the 
Spirit came first from the lips of the Son of 
man." 

And the Revelation itself closes with a Book 
in which Christ from the throne is the speaker. 

From all the words of Christ the fact appears 
that the Father has given to the Son and the 
Son has conveyed by the Spirit the words of 
truth and life. To these truths the Spirit adds 
nothing, but takes, opens, and applies them in 
their fullness of meaning and power, and so is 
the immediate author of the God-breathed, 
written Word of Revelation. 

If Christ be Jehovah ? assuredly the Son and 
Spirit of God must sustain the same relation 
to the spiritual truths of the Old Testament. 
As God, Christ asserts Himself to be the im- 
mediate Revealer of all truth received from the 
Father. Since He is the sole Revealer of truth 
to men, Old Testament truths must be included 
in His New Testament assertions and the Holy 
Spirit must alike inspire both Old and New 



100 THE PLACE AND WORK 

Testament writers. Thus^ Christ's Office-work 
as Prophet is manifest and proven in the Rec- 
ords of both Testaments, unfolded and ex- 
panded by the commissioned Spirit of God. 

Christ's two-fold relation to the Old Testa- 
ment is clearly expressed by Principal Shera- 
ton: "He declared Himself to be the Supreme 
Subject of the Old Testament. He expounded 
'in all the Scriptures the things concerning 
Himself.' 'They were all,' He says, 'written 
concerning me.' 'They are they,' He affirms, 
'which bear witness of me.' He declared 
Himself to be the object of all the promises 
and predictions of the Old Testament; the 
fulfilment and consummation of all its revela- 
tions. 

"He was not only the Subject but the Author 
of the Old Testament. God has given no reve- 
lation of Himself except through the Eternal 
Son. God reveals His power and wisdom in 
His works; and that revelation was given 
through the Son, for 'all things were made 
by Him, and without Him was not any thing 
made that has been made.' God spake by the 
Prophets, but 'it was the spirit of Christ which 
was in them.' — / Pet. i. 11. Our Lord declares 
that 'He is the light of the world.' . . . 
There never was, there never could be, any 
revelation of the Father except through the 
Son. The office of Revealer belongs to Him 



OF JESUS CHRIST 101 

as Son. It is inherent in His Person." — Shera- 
ton. 1 

CHRIST THE ACTOR FOR THE GODHEAD IN CREA- 
TION, PROVIDENCE, AND REDEMPTION 

Thus far the conclusion is reached that both 
Testaments disclose Christ, the Second Person 
of the Divine Trinity, to be the Speaker and 
Revealer of all truth for the Godhead. Fur- 
thermore, explicitly or by clear implication 
throughout both Testaments the Speaker and 
Revealer is also affirmed to be the immediate 
Actor and Agent of the Godhead in all Divine 
Agency: — in Creation, in the Ordering of Hu- 
man History, and in Man's Redemption. This 
is abundantly proven in the explicit statements 
of John and Paul, in the declarations and deeds 
of Christ, and in the Offices, qualifications and 
purposes attributed throughout the early and 
later Records to Jesus Christ, the God-Man, as 

i Failing to consider the all-inclusive character and 
reach of His Office-work as Prophet, some able and de- 
vout students of the Word express astonishment at 
Christ's exact and exhaustive knowledge of the Old 
Testament. Others have incautiously affirmed that 
Christ Himself, derived His knowledge and the subject- 
matter of His teachings from the study of the O. T. 
Scriptures, and this in forgetfulness of His manifold, 
majestic assertions of original and unlimited knowl- 
edge and authority: "I say unto you!" "The words 
that I speak are spirit and life!" "I am the way, the 
truth, and the life!" 



102 THE PLACE AND WORK 

Messiah, God-Anointed and Appointed to be 
man's Prophet or Teacher, Priest or mediating, 
interceding and Atoning Sacrifice, and King, 
or Sovereign Controller of man's life in all its 
events and conditions for time and the after 
changeless destiny. 

If the above Scriptural assurances, reasonings 
and inferences are correctly stated, and if they 
are just, and solidly based, there flows from 
them — as the central, fundamental and all- 
comprehensive disclosure of the entire Divine 
Revelation — this transcendent fact: That both 
Testaments incontrovertibly affirm that Jesus 
Christ, the Eternal Son of God, the "Word 
who was with God and was God," was assigned 
by the original counsels of the Divine Trinity 
to be the immediate A\ctor for the Godhead in 
Revelation, in Creation (John i, 3; Col. i, 16), 
in Human History, and in Redemption. 

In this transcendent fact of His Assigned 
Representative Agency we find the distinctive 
Place and Work of Jesus Christ, the Son of 
God, and the Son of Mary. 1 

In the light of this central, vital disclosure, 

i This Scripturally proven fact would seem to have 
been so deeply fixed upon the mind of Swedenborgh as 
to form a basis for the supreme place assigned to 
Christ in his Unitarian scheme of the nature of God, 
and the subordinate, mystical functions, attributed to 
the Father and the Holy Spirit. 



OF JESUS CHRIST 103 

and as corollaries to it, a double inference 
is imperatively affirmed: First. No human 
thinker who has deliberately ignored these 
Scriptural assurances, or failed to consider the 
deep significance and wide bearing of this 
transcendent fact can possibly form an intel- 
ligent estimate or write rationally of the Per- 
son and place of Jesus Christ in human His- 
tory. Second. No avowedly Christian thinker 
who has not profoundly considered and con- 
vincingly appreciated the marvellous breadth, 
fullness and preciousness of the meaning in- 
volved in this fundamental and momentous fact 
is prepared to deal fairly, much less instruc- 
tively and helpfully, with the nature, the char- 
acter, the teaching and the work of Jesus 
Christ, and with His Divinely assigned place in 
the Christian system of faith. 

From lack of thorough consideration and ap- 
preciation of this vital fact as the supreme and 
central theme of both Testaments, and from 
the resultant lack of spiritual insight and dis- 
crimination, we find among professedly Chris- 
tian present-day writers much that is fanciful, 
baseless, and irreverent in their dealing with the 
nature and teaching of Jesus Christ. The root 
error of their treatment lies in their defective 
viewpoint of Christ Himself. They are so ab- 
sorbed in the thought and study of His human 
nature and relations that they interpret His 



104* THE PLACE AND WORK 

teaching and work exclusively from their own 
imagined estimate of His human character and 
capacity. Thus they forget and ignore the 
cardinal fact that His Godhood dominates His 
manhood in His every word and act. 

This foundation error, under the controlling 
force of inborn conceit, has led to vagrant and 
demeaning estimates, involving essential rejec- 
tion, of the Person, Supremacy and Redemp- 
tive Work of the Divine Christ. In its present- 
day form this radical error is a chief basis of 
the self-styled "New Thought," and is obtru- 
sively pushed to the front by its few but 
clamorous and energetic advocates scattered 
throughout our Colleges and Seminaries, with 
here and there an ambitious, would-be up-to- 
date preacher and writer. Its main support 
is found in a speculative theory evolved a half- 
century ago by a German professor of The- 
ology. A master thinker explains and refutes 
this theory: "Ritschl denies the possibility of 
anything except 'judgments of value,' in the 
religious sphere. In science there is such a 
thing as judgments of matters of fact, i. e„ 
judgments based on facts, and so in accord 
with the principles of logic and philosophy. 
On these rest exact Knowledge and assured 
truth; but there is nothing of this kind in re- 
ligion. According to Ritschl, man is left to 
his own judgments of value or worthy judg- 



OF JESUS CHRIST 105 

merits not based upon fact nor amenable to 
logic or philosophy, but rather selected or ac- 
cepted 'on the basis of volitional and affective 
dispositions/ A man's theological furnishing 
is to be the result of his own choices ('voli- 
tional dispositions') and to come out of his 
own wishes ( 'affective dispositions'). The 
whole region of religion thus becomes a region 
of mere opinion, in which it is literally true 
that 'one man's opinion is just as good as 
another's,' and in which any man's opinion is 
liable to constant change with the shifty winds 
of inclination. Of course, the natural man's 
'volitional and affective dispositions' do not 
incline him to agreement with the great truths 
of the Bible concerning man's sinful and lost 
condition and the way of salvation through 
atonement by Christ. . . . Ritschl's view 
ignores all tests of right thinking and knowl- 
edge. The chief count against it is that it 
ignores the eternal objective realities of which 
the truths of theology are the interpretation 
and expression, and rejects the only way of 
becoming acquainted with them." 

"The peculiarity of the Impressionist School 
founded by Ritschl," wrote Dr. Wm. C. Gray 
in the Interior, December, '97, is that it makes 
nothing of historic or scientific facts or re- 
alities. It is not things as they are or were 
that have value but the impression which the 



106 THE PLACE AND WORK 

whole makes upon the imagination of feeling. 
It is a sort of idealism which denies the reality 
of anything. There are two sources of knowl- 
edge; the external or objective, and the internal 
or subjective. The old theology accepts an 
external standard in the infallible Word of 
God, while the new accepts only an internal 
standard found in the subjective judgments of 
the individual. It asserts a new doctrine of 
infallibility, to be found in the inner conscious- 
ness of the believer." "The Consciousness 
Theory," says another acute thinker, "tests 
the truthfulness of the Sacred Word, not by 
any criteria on the God-ward side, but by its 
accord with Christian consciousness, as it is 
called; that is to say, what one's consciousness 
certifies to be true, to him it is true, and 
what his consciousness rejects as false is false, 
— the inspiration being really in the reader or 
hearer, and not in the writer or author." 

It thus appears that the reliance of the 
Modern Theorists for knowledge and certitude 
of truth is solely upon individual conscious- 
ness — ever shifting impressions of opinion, im- 
agination, or feeling, making up what they call 
experience — to the utter exclusion of reasoned 
processes upon the only fixed basis of Revealed 
Facts. Assumption based upon assertion, with- 
out assignment of reason or proof is the method 
pursued by the advocates of the "New The- 



OF JESUS CHRIST 107 

ology" and of their closely allied comrades of 
the Disintegrating Criticism. The genesis and 
natural connection of these two aggressive 
allies has recently been tersely stated: "The 
Evolutionary Philosophy, 1 as applied to the 
Bible and theology, produces the Radical Criti- 
cism and both have begotten the "New The- 
ology." And a prominent adherent has un- 
blushingly avowed the purpose of this unified 
system of destructive unfaith: "We intend, 
First, to reconstruct the Bible history in har- 
mony with the theory of evolution. Second, 
to eliminate by this process all that is super- 
natural in the record. Third, to unite schol- 
ars in support of sweeping changes in the ortho- 
dox view of the Holy Scriptures." The ulti- 
mate resultant of their efforts we find: 1st. In 

i The writer refers to the radical theory of Evolution 
— a comparatively recent infidel invention — which is the 
basic factor in the structural scheme of "Modernism"; 
a theory which ignores and dethrones God by putting 
Him aside from His own Creation, and making Him 
helplessly subject to His own established natural laws; 
thus eliminating the supernatural from Revealed His- 
tory, and annihilating man's hope of recovery from sin's 
effects through a Divine Redemption. 

The term, evolution, has another reasonable use when 
interpreted as a synonym or equivalent of development, 
and denned as a method of action by a God whose con- 
trolling energy pervades every atom and permeates 
every point of space, and who inherently possesses per- 
sonal omnipotence to achieve events and processes "be- 
yond the natural order," as His inspired Revelation 
abundantly testifies. 



108 THE PLACE AND WORK 

a virtual denial of the Godhood of Christ by 
the claim of more than equal knowledge with 
Him. 2d. In the usurpation by every adherent 
of the sphere and work of the Holy Spirit by 
the claim of equal inspiration with Him. 

The evidence or proof of these startling con- 
clusions may be read in manifold pages of cur- 
rent volumes and reviews. We can only refer 
to a long ago published book (with many since) 
by a professor of Biblical Theology in Yale 
University. Prof. Bacon here claims the ability 
and the right to revise and restate the very 
words of Christ's Sermon on the Mount, select- 
ing, manipulating and rejecting as his own 
judgment determines. A single sentence, 
touching his method, furnishes overwhelming 
evidence to every rightly thinking mind: "The 
method of the Higher Critic in applying his 
principles must be to think himself into the 
atmosphere and circumstances, yes, above all 
into the spirit, ideals, and feelings of Jesus/' 
Upon this a learned judge, in an exhaustive 
refutation of the book's absurdities, naturally 
comments: "Man thinking himself into 
Deity — that is, a finite being thinking him- 
self into the spirit, ideals and feelings of the 
Infinite Being! The claim that a mere man 
can think himself into anything more than a 
mere man and the conceptions of a mere man 
is preposterous!" And Dr. Leitch writes: 



OF JESUS CHRIST 109 

"At the back of the minds of all the critics lies 
the conviction that they know better what 
Christ said and did and was, than any of the 

writers of the New Testament." 



ALLEGED SCRIPTURAL SUPPORT 

Only two brief clauses in the New Testa- 
ment are suggested in support of these amazing 
assumptions and denials touching the Godhood 
of Christ. 

1. Paul's statement that Christ emptied him- 
self.''' — Phil, ii, 7. The meaning of this clause 
is exhausted by the facts embodied in the entire 
sentence, verses 6-8. It can only refer to, 
as it simply affirms, that Christ, "existing in 
the form of God," took on the added form of 
man, that, possessing both natures, He might 
be qualified to mediate between God and man, 
and by His Self-Offering unto death upon the 
cross, the just God might be justified in re- 
mitting the law's condemnation, in imparting 
righteousness and restoring childship to the 
penitent, believing man forever. "Wherefor," 
sums up the Apostle, "every tongue shall con- 
fess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of 
God the Father." In the place of this only 
possible meaning there has been evolved the 
vitally destructive theory of Kenosis or utter 
abdication and surrender of His Deity. 



110 THE PLACE AND WORK 

2. This baseless and impious notion is re- 
inforced by an inferential assumption of a con- 
fessed limitation of His Omniscience by Christ 
Himself in His own single, brief utterance 
recorded by Mark (xiii, 32) and by Matthew in 
like connection: "Of that day or that hour 
knoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven, 
neither the Son, but the Father." 

Concerning this utterance Sir Robert Ander- 
son writes : "Two facts which are strangely 
overlooked claim prominent notice. The first is 
that the antithesis is not all between man and 
God, but between the Son of God and the 
Father. And the second is that He had been 
reinvested with all that, according to Phil, ii., 
He had laid aside in coming into the world. 
'All things have been delivered unto Me of My 
Father,' He declared; and this at a time when 
the proofs that 'He was despised and rejected 
of men' were pressing on Him. His resuming 
the glory awaited His return to heaven, but 
here on earth the all things were already His. 
Should any still doubt or cavil another answer 
to the Kenosis figment is complete and crush- 
ing. Whatever may have been the limitations 
under which He rested during His ministry on 
earth, He was released from them when He rose 
from the dead. And it was in His post-resur- 
rection teaching that He gave the fullest and 
clearest testimony to the Hebrew Scriptures. 



OF JESUS CHRIST 111 

Then it was that 'beginning at Moses, and all 
the prophets, He expounded unto them, in all 
the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.' 
And again, confirming all His previous teach- 
ing about those Scriptures, 'He said unto them, 
These are the words which I spake unto you 
while I was yet with you, that all things must 
be fulfilled which were written in the law of 
Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, 
concerning me.' And the record adds : 'Then 
opened He their minds that they might under- 
stand the Scriptures.' And the rest of the 
New Testament is the fruit of that ministry, 
enlarged and unfolded by the Holy Spirit given 
to lead them into all truth." 

We add some salient points from an exhaus- 
tive study of this clause and its connections by 
Dr. Howard Osgood: 

"Christ does not say that He did not know 
that day and hour, but He says that He did 
not know 'of,' 'concerning,' 'about' that 
day and hour. And yet the plain fact is that 
in all this discourse — Mat. xxiv, 4, xxv, 46; 
Mk. xiii, 5-37; Lu. xx, 8-36— Christ is tell- 
ing His disciples only 'of,' 'concerning,' 
'about' that day and hour. He tells them 
what shall precede that day to the very instant 
it shall appear. He tells them what shall be 
done on that momentous day. So that Christ's 
not knowing of that day must, in some way, 



112 THE PLACE AND WORK 

be consistent with His knowledge and telling of 
that day, unless one would find here a clear 
contradiction, against all sanity and truth. 
Surrounding the verse that contains Christ's 
not knowing we have His assurances that He 
knew, what He had often told before, that be- 
lief or unbelief in Him and in His words was the 
supreme test of man's eternal welfare or eternal 
loss. He knew, as He had before taught His dis- 
ciples (Mat. xvi, 27; Mk. viii, 38; Lu. ix, 26), 
that He would, on that day, be possessed of 
and accompanied with all the evidence of the 
great power and the great glory of God. He 
knew that He would be the Lord of all the 
angels, 'His angels,' who would do His bidding 
and gather His elect from the uttermost part 
of earth to the uttermost part of heaven. He 
had told His disciples previously as He tells 
them now, that He knew that He knew that He 
was to be on that day King of the Kingdom of 
heaven, holding its keys (Mat. xvi, 19), and 
distributing its thrones (Mat. xix, 28). He 
had constantly foretold and He knew that He 
was to be the final judge of all men of all na- 
tions, and would decide the state of their hearts 
and enforce His decisions as to their eternal 
condition. 

"So that Christ's 'not knowing' is preceded 
and followed in this discourse by His repeated 
claims to omniscience and omnipotence. And 



OF JESUS CHRIST 113 

unless we reject the whole discourse and all 
similar statements in other parts of these three 
gospels, Christ's not knowing must be consist- 
ent in His mind with His assertion of His omnis- 
cience and omnipotence. There is, therefore, 
no possible standing ground between rejecting 
the gospels and Christ as mythical delusions of 
abominable falsity, or receiving Christ as He 
everywhere in the gospels claims to be, omnis- 
cient and omnipotent, the Son of God, the 
God-man. In no other way could the omnis- 
cient Son of God be said not to know 'of that 
day and hour' than in the practical sense 
that it was the Father's prerogative and not 
the Son's to declare it." 

And this conclusion is confirmed by Christ's 
definite statement upon this very point to the 
disciples assembled for His Ascension: "It is 
not for you to know times and seasons which 
the Father hath set within His own authority." 
(Acts i, 7). 



VI 



THE PERIL FROM VAGRANT AND 
BASELESS MODERN THOUGHT; 
GOD'S VOICE OF ENLIGHTENMENT 
AND WARNING 

Only a small minority of the Christian Min- 
istry and a very few individuals of the Chris- 
tian Laity have attained such a measure of 
mental training and scholarly learning as to be 
able to make original and thorough investiga- 
tion of the make-up, the textual interpreta- 
tions, and essential teachings of the Bible, and 
by their own research and study to reach con- 
clusive results as to its text and spiritual 
teachings. 

The great majority of enrolled Christian 
ministers and almost the entire Church mem- 
bership have had limited means and opportuni- 
ties of Biblical learning, very many not even 
finding time to give thorough and studious read- 
ing to the Bible itself. They cannot, therefore, 
possess sufficient scholarship to acquire at first 
hand a full and accurate knowledge of theologi- 
cal and critical questions. These, — ministers 
114 



MODERN THOUGHT 115 

and church-members, — generally accept the 
textual interpretations and forms of spiritual 
truth that have been received from trusted pro- 
fessors or preachers. 

This great majority comprises two classes: 
One class, happily including almost the entire 
Church enrollment, finds personal assurance 
and satisfaction in actual spiritual experience 
of enlightening and saving truths. By God's 
grace this vast body of established believers 
are immune to alien and hostile influences. 
They upbuild and maintain the health and 
vigor of the great living and advancing 
Church. 

But there is a second class, relatively incon- 
siderable in number, in both ministry and laity, 
who, by reason of idiosyncrasies of tempera- 
ment or of mental processes, or from an in- 
ordinate ambition to keep pace with the fore- 
most and newest thought, are exposed to error 
and spiritual hurt by an abnormal readiness to 
accept and espouse the unreasoned speculations 
and baseless assumptions of the everywhere ac- 
tive and aggressive exponents of the New The- 
ology and its inseparable twin, the Modern 
Criticism. 

In the interest of this last — smallest yet too 
sadly manifest — class we are now concerned to 
present in clear view the explicit and plain 
warnings of God in His Word, — warnings 



116 THE PERIL FROM 

which every sane and thoughtful mind must be 
concerned to read and consider. No other mo- 
tive or feeling prompts this writing and these 
cited warnings save a deep heart-concern in the 
many avowed disciples of Christ who stand in 
peril to-day. 

The peril touches mainly two basal and vital 
Facts: 1. The Deity of Christ and of the 
Holy Spirit, i. e., the Fact of the Divine 
Trinity, through whose three-fold Offices alone 
man attains life-renewal and peace on earth and 
a blessed, eternal life in heaven. 

2. The absolute integrity and sole relia- 
bility and sufficiency of the Word of God ex- 
actly as guarded and preserved, unchanged by 
human comment, undiminished by a word, and 
without addition. 

Passing by any consideration of the manifold 
changes, the amazing glosses, sophistries, in- 
ventions and conceits whereby many modern 
speculative writers "corrupt the word of God," 
and "handle it deceitfully," we simply cite some 
plain words of enlightenment and warning from 
that Word ; and this, in order that all true dis- 
ciples of Christ may be guarded against vital 
errors that weaken and undermine faith, and 
endanger the precious gospel hope of eternal 
life. 



MODERN THOUGHT 117 

GOd's OWN WORDS OF ENLIGHTENMENT AND 
WARNING 

1. Concerning tJwse who with full knowledge 
of the Old and New Testament Scriptures, 
question or deny the Godhood of the Son and 
the Spirit of God. 

The first word of Divine command and warn- 
ing we find in the Third Prohibition of the 
Moral Law as spoken by the very Voice of God : 
"Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy 
God in vainl" 

Throughout the Scriptures the Divine Name 
stands for the Divine Person. And the One 
Name which appears ever foremost in the Gos- 
pels and Epistles is the Name of Jesus Christ, 
the Eternal Son of God. Isaiah introduces 
Him through a symbolic, but actual transac- 
tion, as conceived by "the Virgin" and named 
"Immanuel," God with us. He further declares : 
"Unto us a Child is born, a Son is given, and 
His Name shall be called . . . the mighty 
God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of 
Peace ; and of the increase of His Government 
and of His Power there shall be no end." 
Other similar evidential references abound in 
the Psalmists and other Prophets. 

The facts reported by the Evangelists and 
Apostolic writers match the predictions of 
Psalmists and Prophets. The Son of God is 



118 THE PERIL FROM 

born and named, and His every word and act 
proves His origin directly from God, and His 
Person to be in the highest sense Divine. As 
further definite points of proof: Baptism is 
performed "in the name of the Lord Jesus," 
(Acts ii, 38) ; we are bidden to "do all things in 
the name of the Lord Jesus" ; it is affirmed that 
"we have life through His name"; and healing 
the body and saving the soul is attributed to 
"the name of Christ." 

Linking together Isaiah, Paul, and Peter 
the proof of Christ's Deity is made still clearer : 

Is a. wlu, 21-23. As the mouth-piece of the 
Redeeming Jehovah Isaiah speaks: "There is 
no God else beside Me, a just God and a Sav- 
iour. Look unto me and be ye saved. By 
Myself have I sworn . . . that unto Me 
every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear." 

Phil, ii, 5, 8, 9-11. "Christ Jesus . . . 
being made in the likeness of men . . . be- 
came obedient unto death, yea, the death of the 
cross. Wherefore God . . . gave unto 
Him the name which is above every name, that 
in the name of Jesus every knee should bow 
and every tongue should confess that 
Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the 
Father." 

Acts iv, 10-12. Peter, arrested for healing 
and standing before the assembled Sanhedrin, 
boldly answers: "In the name of Jesus Christ 



MODERN THOUGHT 119 

of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, . . . even 
in Him doth this man stand before you whole. 
He is the stone which was set at naught of you 
the builders, which was made the head of the 
corner. And in none other is there salvation: 
for neither is there any other name under 
heaven, that is given among men, whereby we 
must be saved." 

Is there not in these incontrovertible Scrip- 
tural testimonies absolute and conclusive evi- 
dence of the true Deity of Jesus Christ, as 
God's Eternal Son? And if so, are not those 
writers who intelligently deny His Godhood and 
boldly assert the fatal untruth of His sole 
manhood justly charged with "taking the name 
of God in vain"? And does not their persist- 
ency in daring the Infinite God involve fearfully 
cumulative guilt? 

Two more words of Warning under this head : 
(1) Christ's confirmation of the Psalmist's 
prophecy, and His denunciation of doom 
against those who defy His Divine Supremacy: 
Luke xx, 17. "The stone which the builders 
rejected, The same was made the head of the 
corner. Every one that falleth on that stone 
shall be broken ; but on whomsoever it shall fall, 
it will scatter him as dust." 

"What a commentary upon that word, 
'Whosoever falls on this stone shall be broken,' 
is the whole history of the heresies of the church 



120 THE PERIL FROM 

and the assaults of unbelief! Man after man, 
rich in gifts, endowed often with far larger and 
nobler faculties than the people who oppose 
him, with indomitable perseverance, a martyr 
to his error, sets himself up against the truth 
that is sphered in Jesus Christ ; and the great 
divine message simply goes on its way, and all 
the babblement and noise are like the sea-birds 
that come sweeping up in the tempest and the 
night, to the hospitable Pharos that is upon the 
rock, and smite themselves dead against it. 
Sceptics well known in their generation, who 
made people's hearts tremble for the ark of 
God, what has become of them? Their books 
lie dusty and undisturbed on the top shelf of 
libraries ; whilst there the Bible stands, with all 
the scribblings wiped off the page, as though 
they had never been ! My brother, let the his- 
tory of the past teach you and me, with other 
deeper thoughts, a very calm and triumphant 
confidence about all that opponents say now- 
adays ; for all the modern opposition to this 
Gospel will go as all the past has done, and the 
newest systems which cut and carve at Chris- 
tianity will go to the tomb where all the rest 
have gone." — Alexander Maclaren. 

(2) Hebrews 10:29. "Of how much sorer 
punishment shall he be judged worthy, who hath 
trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath 
counted the blood of the Covenant ('The blood 



MODERN THOUGHT 121 

of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin,' 1 
J no. i, 7) an unholy thing, and hath done de- 
spite to the Spirit of grace!" 

2. CONCERNING THOSE WHO DIMINISH, ADD TO, 
OR CHANGE THE VERY WORD OF GOD 

Jer. xxvi, 2. "Speak all the words that I 
command thee to speak; diminish not a word." 

Jer. xxiii, 30, 32. "Behold, I am against the 
prophets, saith Jehovah, that steal my words, 
every one from his neighbor . . . and that 
cause my people to err !" 

// Tim. i, 13. "Hold fast the pattern of 
sound words which thou hast heard from me." 

Heb. xiii, 9. "Be not carried away by div- 
ers and strange teachings." 

Col. xiii, 8. "Take heed lest there be anyone 
that maketh spoil of you through his philoso- 
phy and vain deceit, after the rudiments of this 
world, and not after Christ." 

Gal. i, 7, 8. "There are some that trouble 
you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. 
But though we or an angel from heaven should 
preach any other gospel than that which we 
preach unto you, let him be anathema (ac- 
cursed)." 

Mark vii, 1$. "Whosoever shall cause one of 
these little ones that believe on Me to stumble, 
it were better for him if a great mill stone were 



122 FINAL WARNING 

hanged about his neck and he were cast into the 
sea." 

Luke xvii, 1. "Woe unto him through whom 
the offense cometh !" 

The plainest, most explicit word of warning 
we read in the final utterance of Christ from the 
Throne, — the closing word of the Revelation 
from heaven: 

Rev. xocii, 18, 19. "I testify unto every man 
that heareth the words of the prophecy of this 
book, If any man shall add unto them, God 
shall add unto him the plagues which are writ- 
ten in this book: and if any man shall take 
away from the words of the book of this 
prophecy, God shall take away his part from 
the tree of life, and out of the holy city, which 
are written in this book." 



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